It’s Mental Health Awareness Week 2019 and this is a topic close to our hearts at DNAfit. To promote wellness and help remove the stigma around mental health issues, we’re sharing our top tips to reduce stress (in a two-part video series).
The fast-paced lifestyles we lead create rising demands on our body and mind. Traditionally, primary attention is given to health issues that focus on our physical well-being in the form of diet and fitness. This can lead to the condition of our psychological and emotional health slipping through the cracks.
Like we really needed something else to stress about?
Luckily, we’ve got you covered. DNAfit understands the importance of shining a spotlight on mental health awareness, to help support people on their wellness journey, so that their days are more productive and fulfilling.
Everyone has their own individual day-to-day stresses–especially in the work environment.
Johann Huber, Head of Soma by Prenetics put together these inspiring videos, sharing simple steps toward effective stress management. His advice, tips and cautions offer a practical approach to understanding how stress is created and what we can do to manage it well.
Reducing stress at work: eat the frogs first
In this video Johann shares his three top special tips to help you get through your work day like a charm:
- Eat your frog–A practice he derived from the book Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy, which involves doing the most daunting task first thing in the morning. This way you don’t procrastinate throughout the day and feel a sense of accomplishment first thing in the morning.
- Take a walk–Get up! Take a break! Walk a little bit! It does wonders to your brain activity and recharges you.
- Prioritise tasks–If you get overwhelmed by a lot of tasks on your plate, write them down and prioritise them using the Eisenhower Matrix. This is a four-field matrix that categorises your tasks, highlighting what’s most important and urgent from those that are less important and less urgent. The idea is to focus on the most important and urgent tasks so that you don’t get stressed, and you sail through your day with a smile on your face.
Why do we experience stress?
In this video, Johann dives into explaining that stress is the result of an imbalance between resources and demands.
Basically, you have certain demands in life–from work responsibilities to personal life admin, and everything in-between. You also have resources which are the tools and tricks you have to help cope with the demands. When your resources become depleted and outweighed by your demands, you begin to experience stress.
Johann reminds us that whenever you think you’re stressed: you are stressed! But, stress doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Evolution created stress for us to run faster, think quicker and be stronger–especially in an emergency situation. These short bursts of stress prepare us to cope with the crisis situation. The problem is when we’re exposed to stress for long periods of time, chronically, then our cortisol levels rise. This results in poor sleep patterns–and when we don’t get proper sleep, we can’t recover, causing more stress. This can create a vicious circle with negative impacts for our overall health.
The quicker we start our mental health awareness journey, the easier we can adapt. This will help us move away from harmful patterns and accelerate us toward a healthier mental state.
Take a deep breath, you’ve got this!
To keep your stress levels down, try downloading DNAfit’s Guide to Stress, Mindfulness & Meditation. We’ll teach you more about stress hormones, the difference between healthy stress and unhealthy stress, as well as some simple (but effective) stress management techniques.
