Stress Relief

Stress affects human performance in so many ways that just to list the impact upon work would take half of this page. People under high stress become forgetful, are often late for work, miss appointments, have more sick days, have lower competence levels, are more irritable and difficult to get along with, are more likely to break things (by accident or intention) and are great candidates for the kinds of stress-related illnesses and accidents that drain Workers Compensation benefits.

Stress reduction must be a constant, on-going process in all our lives. It helps us avoid pain, illness and accident. And, a low-stress (or low-distress) lifestyle is certainly the most pleasant.

Once a client who was under a great deal of stress at the time said to me, urgently: "Look, all these options you 've shown me for stress management are getting to be too much. It 's like using a technique to put a patch on me here and another to put a patch on me there. I don 't need to get better six months from now after I 've learned a whole bunch of new things -- I need to be better now! Can 't you just boil this stuff down to something simple I can understand and do right now? That I can use every day?"

Good question. In fact, thinking about it provided a whole new approach to helping with stress issues.

There is so much information and advice on stress these days that it 's become stressful to sort through it to get help. Fortunately, the answer to my client 's question is all that information and advice can be boiled down to three basic essentials:

1.) Optimum physical activity.
2.) Mastery of your thinking processes.
3.) A high level of self-esteem.
If you achieve these three things, you will be able to manage your stress, become highly stress-resistant, improve your health and physical well-being, raise your immunity to illness and improve your performance in everything you do.

OPTIMUM PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Why recommend physical activity for stress relief?