How To Handle Stressful Situations Well.

Life is beautiful - but it sure can throw a lot of punches!

Your emotional wellness is strongly correlated with your ability to manage stress.

As individuals, our ability to cope with difficult times/challenges and handle the hard parts of life has an incredible impact on our health.

Unresolved and/or long term stress can result in numerous health issues (mental health issues, cardiovascular diseases and obesity to name a few!)

These five tips can help you increase/protect your emotional wellness when it comes to stressful problems that life throws your way.

💜 Put it into perspective.

Is this issue life or death? No? Then you WILL be okay. Instead of focusing on how negative something is - focus on how you can adapt to the change.

💜 Don’t take it personally.

It is easy to feel as though life is overloading you specifically with obstacles. The truth is - life is inherently full of obstacles.

💜 Choose to grow from challenges.

A life without obstacles would also prevent us from growing as people. As goes the Moliere quote, “The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it.”

💜 Offer grace to others.

Your emotional wellness is also influenced by how you treat others and your patterns of laying blame. We are all people and we all drop the ball sometimes. Consciously choosing to offer grace to others in difficult situations will decrease the negativity and allow you the possibility to create a satisfying experience of resolution with others. (I.e. When the washing machine breaks after you repeatedly asked your husband to service it and he didn’t. You can get mad. Or you can offer grace and work to solve the problem together.)

💜 Learn to take a break from the issue if you need to.

Some things in life are incredibly stressful and our bodies were built to release adrenaline and cortisol when we are stressed. It can be difficult to handle life’s stressors with a calm, clear demeanor when our body is throwing us into fight or flight mode. So when you find that you are not able to “roll with the punches” on a challenge - take a break. Take a walk. Take a breath. And then come back and build an action plan.

The past year has certainly thrown a lot of “punches.”

How have you handled the last 12 months?