Stress, it comes in like a wave and sweeps you off your feet in an instant. It crashes down and surrounds you all at once without a warning. It makes you feel like you’re drowning.
Stress is overwhelming, making you feel like you’ll never swim ashore. It’s consuming, occupying your mind at all times, and pressing down on your shoulders. It’s harmful to not only your mind but your body as well, causing things like depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, fatigue, chest pain, and sometimes even hair loss.
So, how do we manage stress when it feels like it’s creeping around every corner of our lives?
For me, managing my stress looks like a lot of things, but the one simple phrase that always pops into my head is mind over matter.
Mind over matter might seem like a cliche saying that hippies use to create an illusion that everything is in your control, but there’s much more to it than that. It’s a mindset, a way of life, and a foolproof way to relieve stress in times when you feel like your head is going under.
To begin practicing mindfulness, you need to be aware of your emotions. This can look like a number of things: naming the emotions you feel when you feel them, taking specific time out of your day to reflect on them, talking with a family member or friend, or writing it out in a journal.
Although acknowledging how you are feeling is the first step in mastering mind over matter, it’s not a perfect science. It’s okay to be confused about what you’re feeling and thinking. The mind is unstable, turbulent, and difficult to restrain, but through practice, it is restrained, says the Bhagavad Gita, a holy scripture in Hinduism.
Whether you are religious or not, the idea that you can control your condition through the practice of mindfulness is a powerful outlook. Realizing that no one is responsible for the outcome of your life but you can be scary, eye-opening, and exciting.
The second part of practicing mindfulness in the context of mind over matter is positivity. For some, positivity comes naturally, while for others, it’s a constant uphill battle. Positivity, like a sport, is something you need to practice in order to get good at it.
For me, practicing positivity is correcting my negative thoughts when I have them. This practice is called reframing, which is focusing on the positive aspects of a negative situation and redirecting your thoughts when you catch yourself thinking negatively.
For example, you might think something along the lines of “I’m not smart enough”, “I hate how I look” or “I’m never going to be successful”. These kinds of thoughts are intrusive and have no benefit for your mentality. They also become true because whatever you think is what you’re going to believe, so it becomes reality for you. The easiest way to counteract these thoughts is to tell yourself the opposite: “I’m smart and I’m going to conquer this class”, “I love the way I look today, yellow is my color”, “I’m going to work hard to achieve the goals I set for myself”.
Affirmations are brain training. Whatever you tell yourself over and over, is what you’re going to believe, so why not make it positive thoughts instead of negative ones?
Of course, this is not an easy practice, you have to be adamant and consistent with it, but it is a helpful tool to help yourself float in a sea of stress.
In research done by John Hopkins expert Lisa R. Yanek, it was found that there is a strong link between positivity and health. Studies show that positive attitudes improve life satisfaction, lead to healthier decisions, lessens the risk for cardiovascular disease, brain injuries, brain tumors, and strokes.
If you want to read more specifics about the power of positive thinking done by John Hopkins Medicine, click here.
Lastly, setting aside blocks of time in my day to meditate or journal are major ways that I manage my stress levels, but don’t take my word for it, read the Mayo Clinic’s “Meditation: a simple, fast way to reduce stress“.
I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Hold it. Exhale.
I continue to breathe, 4 seconds in, hold, 4 seconds out. The weight on my shoulders that has accumulated throughout the day quickly disappears and my heart falls back into rhythm with the rest of my body. I focus all my thoughts and energy on the present.
Meditation and journaling are easy, inexpensive, and only take a few minutes. Whether you need to relieve some stress from the day or work through a situation that happened weeks ago, try meditating with the intention to let go and then write what that experience brought to light in your mind.
Like all things, these practices take time to master, but through consistency and time, anyone can learn to drown their stress instead of letting it drown them.