What is Stress?

Before going to discuss about how to relieve stress, let’s talk about what stress is and how it occurs and whether it occurs at a certain age.

When we talk about stress, there is something we need to understand first. That is, stress is not a mental illness. Maybe you have been thinking that stress is an illness for so long.

But chronic stress can lead to many mental and physical illnesses, such as; depression, anxiety, personality disorders, heart relates problems like high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, strokes, skin and hair problems and etc.

We can simply explain that stress is a response to pressure. People are fearful about their health, the economy, their jobs, the future, corruption, crime, and their feelings of powerlessness. When various things happen that we don’t expect, we don’t like, when we have to face certain situations, it creates unnecessary pressure on our mind. Then our mind collapses, our body weakens, and it becomes difficult to focus on one thing.

When an individual is in a toxic thinking state, the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and homocysteine can significantly affect the immune system, cardiovascular system, and neurological system. Although small amounts of stress can sometimes be good, prolonged stress is never good.

Stress reduction techniques all over the internet often provide you with simple temporary solutions. But in this article we hope to bring you 12 most reliable and scientifically proven ways to relieve stress, plus 3 short-term, temporary methods. We respectfully remind you that the sources for this article are “Getting Things Done – the art of stress free productivity” by American Productivity Consultant, David Allen & “Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess” by Dr. Caroline Leaf.

12+ Scientifically Proven Ways to Relieve Stress

01. Keep a Limit on All Your Work

Everything should have a limit. Our works should also have definite boundaries. But today, in our busy lifestyle, there is no end to the work we are assigned to do, whether at home or at work. Some people, especially women, come home after working hard all day at work, and have a huge amount of work to do at home.

Don’t start work that never ends. Have a specific deadline for every job, task and project. Also, decide how much work you can afford to fit your capacity. Heavy workload puts a lot of pressure on you mentally and physically.

When there is a lot of work on one side, he suffers from mental suffering thinking when to finish it. Also, on the other hand, we suffer a lot physically in trying to finish the work. So keep a definite limit, time and some pattern for every work.

02. Focus on the Job

Once we start any work, we should always give it good attention. Within the job, it may be a specific responsibility given to us by the job to pay attention to the related tasks until they are completed properly.

Pay proper attention to all the activities you do in your daily life. If you are a student, your entire focus should be on your studies. You do a lot of unnecessary work during your studies. Maybe starting love-affairs, spending unnecessary time on social media, partying with friends.

I am not saying that those things are not necessary in life. It’s normal to fall in love when you’re young, it’s normal to party to have fun. But the problem is that you don’t know how to balance those things.

Sometimes the negative results of things you do unconsciously come after a long time. You may have a lot of fun when you do those things, but the day you have to suffer the consequences of those things, it will not be easy to face them.

A bad thing that many people do is to use the phone while driving. You should give your entire attention to driving at that time. If you die in an accident, your story ends. But imagine if a loved one of yours dies in front of your eyes due to your careless driving, will you be able to bear that pain? That incident will haunt your mind for the rest of your life.

Imagine you are working with large machinery. Even if you lose your attention for a second, you could have a big accident. So get used to paying attention to what is needed at that time. Also, when you pay attention to the work you are doing, you can avoid many possible mistakes.

If you are a person who always works with defects and mistakes and gets scolded from everyone, if you are suffering from a lot of stress because of that, then do the related duties with good attention and desire. Those who scolded you will praise you.

03. The “Mind Like Water” Simile

If you drop something into still water, imagine how the water will be agitated. If you throw a big stone, the water will move a lot. If you drop a small stone, the water will move a little. Water reacts to that object by considering how much resistance it gives to it. It doesn’t overreact or underreact Water responds to it only to the extent required.

Also, water can capsize giant ships. The water can come as a tsunami, a flood and completely submerge villages and towns. And water can be very still, very calm.

Your mind is also like that. Your mind has the ability to release great power from your body if you want to. Also, your mind can slow down your whole body. Just as your mind can make you completely weak, your mind can make you stronger to face your problems better.

If you strengthen your mind, any problem that comes your way is not really a problem. Don’t get angry unnecessarily in the face of small problems. Don’t be sad in the face of troubles and obstacles. And don’t get too excited about small things. Respond only as much as necessary to everything.

You may have seen people who practice kung fu, even with very thin bodies, break things like bricks and planks. They don’t do that because they have superpowers, they use their strength where they need it in the way they need it, because they have practiced their martial arts for many years to do so.

04. Your Mind is a Fabulous Thing

Are you in control of your mind or are you controlled by your mind? There is a popular saying that instead of the dog wags the tail, ‘the tail wagging the dog’.

To the question I asked about whether you control your mind and whether your mind controls you, you can ask a question in reverse if you want, who is called “you” when there is no mind? Sounds like a paradox, right? As I see it, you and your mind and all the other parts of the body are not separate things, but all of them are connected to each other.

And another question that arises is whether there really is such a thing as mind or not. what do you think I’m guessing that almost everyone reading this article believes that there is such a thing as the mind. Because I don’t think that someone who isn’t like that would be interested in reading an article like this about something like getting rid of their stress.

OK, let’s just say there is such a thing as mind? If so, where is it in our body? This is a question raised by many materialists. So who told you that the mind is another organ like our heart, liver, kidney and brain? There is no physical organ called mind anywhere in our body. So, why do people talk so much about the mind?

Today, the accepted opinion is that the mind is based on the brain. But I, as a person who has done many researches, experiments, gathering facts, and various religious explorations about the mind, I have a certain definition regarding the mind. I’d like to tell you that, it’s up to you to accept or reject it.

As I see it, what is called mind is a certain nature and behavior of something. In other words, the main control room of our body is our brain. So the behavior of our brain, its nature, the way it works and the way it feels is called the mind.

Like you, I also considered Buddhism as another religion for a while, but later on studying it, I realized that there is a great hidden science that was not exposed to the society. You will be surprised if you hear this, the nature of even the particles from which everything in the world is created has been taught in depth by the Buddha 2500 years ago, but using different terms.

Buddhism mentions about the mind, the mind is something that travels far, behaves alone, has a cave as its abode, and has no body. In fact, I will have to meet you in a separate article to fully explain the deeper meaning of this. In the future, we hope to bring many facts about the scientific aspects of Buddhism.

I mentioned above that all these things are interconnected. But, this phenomenon called ‘mind’ can work on its own without the help of any other organ or body part.

Imagine that you want to visit Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro from America, your mind has already gone to that place, right? But your body didn’t go anywhere, but your mind went to visit Rio de Janeiro alone. That is the nature of our mind.

So how do you control your mind? You cannot control the mind, the mind can control the mind. This is a deep matter that is difficult to understand at once. I wonder if I am increasing your stress by saying these things. I’m sorry, but there’s a lot to explain about the mind. People have a very wrong understanding of the mind.

I will tell you many more interesting facts about the mind in the future, so try to understand a little of what I have said about the mind. Make an effort to explore the behavior of your mind, it will be something new for you, and it will also give you an understanding of how your mind works, how emotions occurs, how stress occurs and how it affects.

05. The 90 Second Rule

The 90 Second Rule is a directed neuroplasticity practice you can use any time you need to. This method can be used to deal with feelings of anger, sadness and guilt. When you experience something, be it an event, a situation, a spoken word, or something else, within the first few seconds, your brain and unconscious mind dynamically self-regulate this incoming information.

This initial biochemical and electrical surge of any thought or feeling lasts anywhere from thirty to ninety seconds, an adjustment period and not the best time to respond to what you are experiencing. When you don’t react to this, the feeling disappears within 90 seconds. If you still feel that thought after 90 seconds, it’s because we want to hang on to that thought for a little longer.

First you can Identify the emotional reactions such as, sweating, feeling hot, rapid heart beat, agitation, chest tightness, shivering or anything else.

Then you can identify the type of your emotion. That is, identify whether it is sadness, anger, guilt, or disgust or any other emotion.

Then step three, let the emotion pass without judging it or trying to react to it. Don’t try to hold onto the feeling or force it away. Just let it go and wait for it to go away. You can do the following during this time.

1. Do some deep belly breathing – at least ten rounds.
2. Do something physical like a few sprints, jumping jacks, burpees, anything to channel the stress and intense emotions.
3. If you can’t do any of the above, imagine the person in front of you shrinking down to ant size.
4. You can drink some water to calm down; I have done this method, when I get angry, I drink about 500 ml at once. Sounds silly, but it works for me, you can also try.

06. The Quantum Zeno Effect

We are very quickly attracted to negative things. Our brain also grasps negative things faster than positive things. Because everything negative is covered with a beautiful cover at the beginning. But many positive things have a very bitter nature at the beginning. Also, positive things sometimes take a long time to produce results. So we naturally gravitate towards negative thoughts.

But these negative thoughts turn your mind into a complete mess with time. By this method, we mean that conscious positive intentions improve the functioning of the brain and make it function properly. If you have any negative, useless, insignificant feeling, you can think of anything, place, person or event that makes you happy, proud, excited and inspired at that moment.

07. The Multiple Perspective Advantage (MPA)

Simply, the MPA means standing back and observing your own thinking. As humans we can watch what we’re saying, doing, thinking, feeling, and choosing, as well as our body language and even our intentions. By doing this, we can gain great learning potential, wisdom and creativity and have many benefits for your brain and life.

08. The Box Technique

Although the box technique is sometimes very easy to do, sometimes it can be difficult to do. Imagine this, when a cockroach comes into your room and bothers you by flying here and there, you catch it and put it in a box and close it. Then it can’t bother you anymore.

There are plenty of people like this cockroach around us. They always bring us only some toxic emotion, only impulse, sadness, frustration. Stay away from such people as much as possible. Even if you see them, look away, don’t start a conversation, in short, leave them out of your mind.

The best thing to do is to cut such people out of your life. Whether that person is your best friend, your lover, your relative, whoever, keep them away from your mind and life, don’t care. Then no matter what they say or do to you, we can ignore it and forget about it and do our work.

09. The Rewinding Technique

This is a very nice method. See yourself in a movie. Imagine you can change anything in that movie as you want. But the scene should be changed only if it is not good.

If the scene needs to be changed, you have to pause it first. It means that you have seen that there is a problem with your intentions. Then you rewind to the beginning of the scene. It means finding the root cause of your intentions, thoughts or emotions. You replay means that you have found the relevant flaw and fixed it. It means that you have reframed your thoughts in the right way.

10. The Suit of Armor Technique

What if someone shoots you while wearing a bulletproof vest? Nothing will happen to you there, because of that bullet proof suit. In order to successfully face the challenges from the outside, you too have to wear a suit of armor.

Visualize in your mind that all external challenges are bullets coming at you. People’s words, the way they treat you, the problems you face in your daily life and all these things. Imagine you are wearing a suit of armor. If so, you won’t have a problem with those incoming bullets. Put an invisible shield on your mind that will help you to relieve stress.

11. Past is not the Place to Live

No matter how beautiful or sad your past is, it’s not a place to cling to and live forever. No matter how bad your past is, you cannot recreate that past. So by dwelling on the unpleasant memories of the past, you miss the present.

Also, no matter how beautiful your past is, you cannot go back to that time and enjoy that beauty, happiness, and comfort. Living in the past in this way will make your future life worse. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. So strive to make your future happy with courage.

12. Closing Your Eyes and Focusing on the Big Picture

Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Take a deep look at the issues you currently have. Explore in your mind what the underlying facts are. See and understand the mistakes and shortcomings in some of your thoughts. See the effect it will have on your mind, your life, and the future. Find ways to reframe your thinking.

We all have many dreams. Think about what you have done so far for your dreams, what you are doing now, and what you hope to do in the future. Nothing just happens. Anything you get depends on how much you sacrifice or are willing to sacrifice for it. To get something we have never had, we will have to do many things that we have never done before.

No matter how many problems you have in the present, don’t break your mind and think about your beautiful future life, see yourself living beautifully in that future world. Turn that desire into motivation to tackle most of your current problems.

13. Listen to Mind Relaxing Music

You can find many mind relaxing music on YouTube. But you may not like all music. Choose some music you like. You can listen to that music when you have a break. But I don’t find it very effective to listen to this music before sleep. You can listen not only to mind relaxing music, but also to any song you like.

14. Watch Movies to Relieve Stress

There are plenty of comedy movies. Also, by now many newbies have also come out in short videos on YouTube. You can watch any type of video or cinema to relieve your stress. But keep in mind these 12, 13 and 14 tips are not permanent ways to relieve stress. But you can relax your.

15. Meditation to relieve stress

There are many different meditation techniques. There are many forms of meditation that originated in ancient Asian countries as well as the modern meditation techniques. However, you should choose a meditation practice that can relieve stress and cleanse your toxic emotions and mind. Personally, I recommend Anapanasathi meditation technique.