How Do YOU Respond To STRESSFUL Situations?

It Matters to Your life and health!

How do you deal with stressful situations?

Are you an Escape Artist, Distractor or Solver?

How Do You Respond to Stressful Situations? Learn Why It Matters So Much!

How you deal with stressful situations matters. Unless you were born with a special gift for managing stress intelligently and effectively, this is one of the skills worth your time to develop. Your response to stressful situations can predict the level of success you enjoy in your life. How you deal with stress also affects your health in a big way.

One thing is for sure, if you avoid all stressful situations, your life will be stagnant. Growth requires dealing (and managing) with stress.

Let’s first look at the 3 different ways we tend to respond to stressful events in our life. See which one sounds the most like you…

Are you an escape artist, distractor, or a solver? Most people respond to stress in one of three ways.

◦ The escape artist does anything she can to remove herself from the situation. Any solution that removes the stress in the short-term is a good option in her mind. The long-term consequences are of little concern. Hate your job? Quit, even if you don’t have another. Relationship stress? Leave them. You get the picture.

◦ The distractor attempts to distract herself from the issue that’s causing the stress. This distraction often takes the form of watching TV, shopping, doing chores, surfing the internet, or eating unhealthy foods.😜

◦ The solver focuses on finding solutions to the cause of the stress. If there isn’t a solution to the stress, the solver does her best to relax and avoid worrying about anything beyond her control.💃

Now let’s look at the negative effects of poor responses. Poor responses to stress can negatively impact your physical and emotional health, as they tend to internalize the stress or cause worse results than the original issue. You might tend to either over react to the situation or completely ignore it and neither is helpful to your long term health. Learning to respond to stress effectively is good for you in many ways!

It’s clear that stress is a part of life that must be managed effectively to maximize success, health, and happiness.

Use these tips to deal with stressful situations intelligently while taking care of yourself in the process.

You have probably heard the saying “it’s not the situation that is the problem, it’s how you handle or react to the situation that causes your stress.” This is so true and if you can stand back from the situation long enough to take a deep breath, slowly exhale, relax your body and shift your awareness out of your head into your heart, you can reset your nervous system to see the best course of action to take in the moment.

When you get stressed and are in “fight or flight” mode, you will not make good, long-term decisions about how to handle the situation you find yourself in. You won’t be able to think clearly or remember important things that can help with good decisions. If possible, give yourself those few minutes to do your deep slow breathing and shift your focus from your head (thoughts) down into your chest around your heart. Breath in from there and do your best to shift your energy (focus) there.

It is in your relaxed heart space where you will be able to access the wisdom needed to make a good decision about next steps. If you can’t relax and shift your energy, then do your best to not commit to a solution based on your stressed reaction. This is not the same as being an “escape artist” or “distractor”. This is about being skilled in recognizing when you are in “fight or flight” stress response mode and taking the time needed to relax and become more attuned to your own wisdom.

Once in that relaxed, heart space, then you can take the following action steps:

1. Focus on finding a solution. There really isn't any other option that makes sense. If you're going to expend time and energy, expend them wisely. Rather than stressing and worrying, now you can focus on finding a way out of the situation causing the stress. If there's nothing you can do, do your best to avoid worrying about it and continue to relax and not listen to all the voices in your head.

2. Implement your solution. Once you've found a solution, put your effort into implementing it. This is the best use of your time at this point.

◦ Consider how different your life would be if you committed all of the energy you spent worrying and put it toward finding solutions and putting them into action.

Everyone deals with stress in their own unique way. We might mimic our parents or still be using habits we developed in childhood. Most of us wish we were better at managing stress. Make time for examining this important part of your life. How you respond to stress matters.

Love to hear how you manage stressful situations when they appear in your life.