How to use Mindfulness to cope with Stress
Is stress all bad? No, stress is not always a bad thing and in fact, we can learn how to use mindfulness to cope with stress. Recent studies has started to differentiate eustress (positive stress) from distress (negative stress). I’m not agreeing we need another terminology to complicate things, but I completely agree that stress may not be bad. Especially if one can recognize stress is there to motivate us and get us to focus our energy, and we know how to cope and use it to improve our overall performance. And these are my 3 ways to use mindfulness to cope with stress.
Mindful Awareness: Recognize the stress inside your body
First, we need to learn to recognize the stress inside us – yes, the bodily sensation. Do you feel tension in your chest, or shoulders, or the fluttering in your gut? When we learn to be mindful of the bodily sensation, we learn it is our amazing body’s way of warning us. For instance, I usually feel it in my neck area this tension whenever I am stressed.
How to create mindful awareness: Morning Meditation
A consistent daily practice has completely retrained and rewired my brain to notice my own emotions so much better, which means I am so much more attuned to what’s going on inside me and able to press that pause button when the situation calls for.
Mindful Analysis: Understand the Stressors
Once we are alerted that we feel stressed, we can then identify the stressors that’s causing the stress. Is the stressor valid? Is it short term? Do we have the right resources to complete this challenge and then the stress will go away? Or do we need to ask for help to complete our challenge?
How to carry out a Mindful Analysis: Self reflection
Take 5 mins to reflect and write down the events or situations that are causing the stress. Then, scale it from 1 to 5 how confident you are of working out a successful outcome of the situation. The lower it is, the higher the chance you are actually not coping well with it, which means the higher your stress level would be. If this is so, think about the resources you have to cope with this and if you need help. Ask for help early!
Mindfulness Technique: Cope with Stress
In the past two years since I practiced mindfulness, I have noticed such incredible difference to how I cope with stress, and in fact how to leverage on stress to enhance my performance. Mindfulness does not make the stress go away, it just allow us to remain calm, reactivate our pre-frontal cortex and think, analyze & choose the best response / decision. So, my favourite mindfulness technique that works like a charm to calm me down 99% of the time is an NLP anchoring technique!
My “Calm” Anchor
This NLP Anchor technique has consistently worked for me like magic to simply calm me down instantaneously. I used to get worked up and react easily, but ever since I learnt to have the mindful awareness of my emotions, and activate my “Calm” anchor, I have been able to prevent this “eruption” for 99% of the time! If you wish to learn more about how to create your own NLP anchor, drop me a message!