Annihilating the stress demon

I woke up this morning feeling like I had been hit by truck sometime during the night. Opening my eyes was a struggle; I didn’t even want to consider get out of bed. Luckily, on Wednesdays I work from home so I allowed myself a sleep in – till 8am. At 9am I had breakfast – oats, sunflower seeds, flaxseed oil, milk, and a cup of tea with lemon and honey. Usually, I would be wide awake by now but everything felt like mush – I hate it when that happens and recently it’s been happening more often than I’d like to admit.

All day I seemed to be moving around the house – from the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and back again about a half a dozen times. I’m blaming it on stress. I’ve been stressing a lot lately. Actually lately is an understatement. I’ve been stressing like crazy for the past year or so and in recent weeks the stress has been ignited further by the stupidity and irresponsibility of certain individuals in my life. Instead of working I spent the day thinking about a family member’s problem when I should have been working and/or worrying about my own issues. Unfortunately, that’s impossible to do when someone else’s stunt has had an impact on me indirectly.

Stress is a pain the ass. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve been feeling like shit half the time. Running does help though. After forty minutes or so of hitting the pavement or doing a treadmill workout I feel like a new person – but only temporarily. Today I didn’t get a chance to go for a run and while I could pull out a dozen excuses from the bag why I didn’t, the simple fact is that I couldn’t be bothered. I’ve still time to fit in some exercise today though, but it won’t be much as tomorrow I have a 10km fun run in the city. I wanted to do a PR as the route is fairly simple, now all I care about is feeling good at the finish line – anything else is going to be icing on the cake.

In relation to stress I’m still trying to figure out how to completely eliminate it from my life. Running helps, so does a positive attitude – but when you combine financial, family, relationship and the world issues, you sometimes feel like you’re standing in the middle of a sinking ship and there’s no hope in sight. There’s always someone who’s in a worse position – and someone in a better one – so that doesn’t always help in feeling better. What does help though is identifying the stress triggers and taking control when one decides to attack – and believing that everything is going to be ok.

Some stress annihilation tactics I use;

*Closing my eyes and breathing in and out deeply and slowly for a few minutes.

*Going for a forty minute or longer run to clear my head.

*Doing any type of workout even if it’s just gentle stretching.

*A glass of wine and delicious dinner.

*Writing down my thoughts and feelings and then burning the piece of paper.

*Talking with mum

*Eliminating the triggers that can be controlled – e.g. debt, unhealthy relationships, annoying job, etc [most people have one or more of these, I’m faced with a couple myself]

*Attempting not to worry about the issues out of my control – e.g. other people, the government, weather, etc.

Now that I’ve got all that off my chest I can get on with the rest of the day, or evening since it’s already seven pm. Hopefully, I’ll fit in an abs workout, get a couple queries sent to magazines I want to write for, eat some chocolate, do some reading before I turn off the light, and if all goes well – get some quality sleep before the race tomorrow.

What are your stress annihilation tactics?