6 simple techniques to enjoy your life when you are stressed

In my day to day there is so little leisure time that sometimes it becomes very difficult for me to enjoy it. I am clear that if I were granted three wishes, the first would be: to have more free time.

Time to enjoy my children, time to work more calmly, time for my partner, to meditate, to go running, to have lunch with friends….TIME…I want to have more time!. But I have what I have, so I have decided to do something about it and I am going to share my techniques with you.

The key to a healthy life with stress is balance, that is, that the daily level of stress is stimulating but controllable. Really, we could say that there are two types of stress, good stress and bad stress, or as Tim Ferriss says: distress which is a negative stimulus that makes you weaker, more insecure and incapacitates you from doing things and eustress (eu- is a Greek prefix meaning "good"), which is the one that allows us to overcome our limits, react positively to any kind of threat and step out of our comfort zone to grow and improve. Well then, the idea would be to generate eustress in our life and for this I have devised some steps that I have already begun to follow:

1. Do one thing at a time

In the 21st century it is fashionable to boast that we are capable of doing two things at once. Something completely false if you take into account that the level of attention we pay decreases and that the probability of making mistakes increases. Therefore, we can indeed do two things at once but not as well as if we do only one.

But there is something more, when we do not pay attention to the task we are performing we lose the opportunity to enjoy what we are doing. Our head is on too many things at once and that generates an unnecessary feeling of discomfort and rush. I have verified that I take exactly the same amount of time to do two tasks at once as to do them one after the other. The timed time is the same but my feeling is very different:

When I do two things at once I feel stress, I lose concentration and sometimes I get lost, I forget what I was doing.

When I do one thing after the other, my feeling is of going more calmly, more relaxed and enjoying more of what I do.

2. Enjoy what you do in each moment

If you iron, iron, if you are working, work, if you are shopping, shop and if you are playing with your child, play. Do not think about the activity you have to do right afterward or about what you forgot to do at work. Keep your mind in the present moment, in the here and now. Enjoy what you do, give it all your attention and you will see how your subjective feeling of anxiety and stress decreases and your capacity for enjoyment increases. In the end, you are going to have to do the same things in your day to day, what it is about is learning to delight in each one of them.

I invite you to check it for yourself: choose any activity of your day to day and give it all your attention, if thoughts come to you do not pay attention to them, let them pass and return to what you are doing, to what sensations you have, how your body responds, how you breathe more calmly and how the activity you are doing unfolds. You will see what a change!!

3. Eliminate some things from your schedule

Prioritize, the time has come to analyze the things you have pending and decide which ones can wait and which ones can disappear. The goal is to reduce the pending items on your schedule, so that what you set for yourself each day is achievable. If I set myself too many objectives in a single day, it is likely that I cannot do them all and my feeling at the end of the day will be one of failure and frustration. If instead of that, I make a more realistic schedule with the feasible things I can do in a day, it is likely that I will finish them and at the end of the day I will feel satisfied. Surely, both ways I am going to end up doing the same amount of things, but in the second example I will feel much better than in the first.

4. Reserve a space each day for yourself

Normally, in our list of important things our personal well-being does not appear and that is a serious mistake. If I am well, I will be able to care for my children better, work more effectively, enjoy my partner or pay attention to a friend. From now on we are going to reserve a space for ourselves in our day to day. It will be a space to take care of ourselves, we can go to the gym, go running, do yoga or walk or simply breathe by stopping for 5 minutes. Some activity that involves body and mind and that provides us with a time to be with ourselves. It does not matter if one day it is 5 minutes and another day an hour, what matters is that it becomes part of your life. It is proven that moderate and frequent exercise improves the mental process and mood.

5. Do not be demanding

We start from the premise that perfection does not exist and we cannot encompass everything. We must know how far we can go and at what moment it is better to ask for help. Frequently, we tend to want to do everything ourselves, without delegating anything and moreover do it well or better than well. We demand more of ourselves than we can give. We are not supermen, we are not omnipresent, we cannot handle everything. If we accept this, we will know how to delegate without feeling like failures for it.

6. Focus on the positive

Your attitude and your thoughts greatly influence how you perceive situations. There are several studies that support that positive thinking helps you to face life in a healthier way and help your immune, endocrine and nervous system (Studies carried out at the University of Wisconsin). A good dose of optimism will help you get out of difficult situations.

According to the Mayo Clinic positive thinking affects health in the following ways:

• Increases longevity.

• Decreases the risk of depression.

• Decreases the levels of stress.

• Strengthens the immune system.

• Improves cardiovascular health.

We only need to focus our attention on the good that happens to us and not always on the bad. Be grateful for what you have, do not complain constantly and enjoy the good moments. It is not about ignoring the negative, it is about not giving it all our attention.

Well then, these are the techniques, now it is your turn to put them into practice. You can tell us your experience in the comments!!