Feeling stressed and struggling to cope? Here are some tips that we’ve found to help you manage your wellbeing. These are a few little things that you might like to incorporate into your everyday life and they really can make such a big difference. Whether its work stress or home life, everyone deals with stress differently and these are some ways to help you manage it.

Relax your muscles

When you’re stressed, your muscles can get tense. Refresh your body and help to loosen up your muscles by:

  • Stretching
  • Enjoying a massage
  • Taking a hot bath or shower
  • Getting a good night’s sleep

Make Lists

If you’re finding that your workload feels unmanageable and you’re feeling overwhelmed, try making lists.

These can then be divided up into more manageable chunks or organised by the level of priority so it doesn’t feel like everything needs to happen all at once. You can even try rating them 0-5 in the list of priorities to help you work through that list.

 Wellbeing toolkit

Create your own ‘wellbeing toolkit’.

These are items or techniques that you’ve found help you when you’re feeling stressed or anxious. This could be anything from meditation to aromatherapy oils to a candle… identify those things that help soothe your mind and soul and call on them when you need them.

 Practise the ‘four Ds’

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by emails and don’t know where to start, try practicing the four Ds for better time management. These are:

  • Delete: you can probably delete half the emails you get immediately.
  • Do: if the email is urgent or can be completed quickly.
  • Delegate: if the email can be better dealt with by someone else.
  • Defer: set aside time later to spend on emails that require longer action.

Source: www.nhs.uk

Me Time

Struggling to find ‘me time’? Why not try getting up 1/2 an hour earlier each day. This extra time could allow you to:

  • Brain dump
  • Plan
  • Meditate, pray or go inwards
  • Read
  • Write some pages
  • Or whatever else pleases your mind

Press Mute on your ‘Inner Critic’

We all have an inner critic ….that voice inside our head that can sabotage our plans and make us doubt our abilities. So what can you do to add balance to this voice? 

  1. Start to take notice of the voice. Who is it, a parent, a friend?
  2. When does it make its appearance? Sometimes the inner critic becomes more active when you’ve had a great success, or when you’re trying to make a change in your thinking.
  3. Becoming aware of the voice, which is often self-critical and lacks empathy is key to trying to start to make small adjustments to your thinking.
  4. Would you talk to your friend in such a harsh and critical way? Or would you try and be a bit softer and considerate with your friend? Hopefully the latter… but if the former, then maybe you have more self-work to do.
  5. Look in the mirror and start to see yourself with love and compassion. Positive self-talk really does infiltrate the subconscious. Eg if you tell yourself something simple like ‘I love you’, repeatedly, you’ll start to treat yourself more lovingly.
  6. Be aware of what you absorb via other people, news sources and social media.
  7. Take your power back!

Check in with yourself

A few times a day try to take a moment to check in with yourself. Recognise if there is something that is bothering/upsetting/making you uncomfortable and address it. Also make sure to check in on the good things in your day – what’s making you happy / what’s going well.

It doesn’t have to be the big things but giving yourself time to ‘check in’ will mean that you can make sure to be kind to yourself and not let things build up and fester.