De-Stress Tips

The concept

In a previous ‘bite’ we shared the ‘stress bucket’. It showed the importance of recognising the signs of moving from feeling healthy pressure to unhealthy stress. This visual identifies a number of ideas that you can use to help put some ‘holes’ in that stress bucket – to help yourself and others to de-stress.

It is centred around 5 dimensions of resilience: the Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual and Social. Each of these dimensions play a vital role in helping to improve your wellbeing.

Experts suggest we need to be more proactive in managing our wellbeing. Rather than just waiting till the bucket is full and finding ways to treat our stress, we should make effort to put in preventative measures as well. And where we can, it helps to pay attention to things that are a part of our normal day so they are not all ‘extra’ – creating new habits can be hard. So it helps to do more mindful noticing, savouring, quietening of the mind. Being more present in the moment. Doing things with intention.

And one of the keys here is doing things for 2-10 minutes, but often. Frequency beats intensity! These do not have to be big time takers – finding lots of little moments help keep the stress bucket level down.

Why it’s useful

We need to both proactively and reactively manage our stress. Finding ways to preventatively build in stress-busting practices is a really important part of the stress management equation. It is easier to treat stress when we also have some proactive steps in place. This visual helps offer some prompts around 5 dimensions of resilience.

How/when to apply it

Use this in conjunction with the ‘Stress Bucket’ leadership bite. Use the 5 dimensions of resilience prompts and see if any ideas resonate with you. And if they don’t, see what other ideas they trigger that are better suited to you!

Think about ways to slow down and pay attention to the things you might already be doing but are too busy to notice. Researchers have said we can spend 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we are actually doing! Notice the surroundings as you walk to your next meeting, take a walk at lunchtime – try it, it works! And share this with others

Want more?

Want a 2 page summary of this ‘Leadership Bite’?

Click this link to access a printable 2 page summary of this ‘Leadership Bite’

Want to see the other ‘Leadership Bites’?

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Want to see the ‘stress bucket’ bite? Click here

Want to see tips for mindfulness? Click here

Click here to see some posts on wellbeing