This is the fourth in my series on managing your emotions. So far I’ve covered anxiety, anger, sadness and inadequacy. This week we’re going to look at stress.

We’ll cover what stress feels like, the problems it can cause us and how to let go of it so we can find peace with mindfulness.

The signs of stress

Have you been feeling stressed today? How do you know?

It shows up differently for everyone, but it could look like:

• Mentally: racing thoughts, endless to-do lists in your mind, worrying you don’t have time to do it all.
• Physically: tension in your forehead, jaw, shoulders, back, belly, groin, tight breathing, high heart-rate, digestion problems, over or under eating, skin problems, exhaustion.
• Emotionally: having a short-temper, poor sleep, difficulty concentrating.
• Behaviourally: working on over-drive or procrastinating and avoiding doing things.

If a system is ‘stressed’ it means it's overloaded, so stress is also linked to overwhelm and burnout.

A simple way to think of it is when there’s a gap between what you want to be happening vs what is happening. For example:

• You want a manageable workload, but you feel totally snowed under
• You want to be on time for your presentation, but you’re running late
• You want to financial security, but you don’t have enough to pay the mortgage

The impact of stress in the long-term is really serious. It can lead to:

• Burning out and not being able to work for a period of time
• Health problems including strokes, heart-attacks, head-aches, chronic back-pain
• Relationship problems because we’ve become irritable, snappy, withdrawn or not present

Usually the way we deal with it is to try to achieve our way out of it. We constantly make plans in our head to fix our problems and tick more things off our to-do list.

But the fact is this doesn’t work. No-one’s ever got to the bottom of their to-list and thought, “Great! I’m not stressed any more, now I can relax!”

The to-do list is INFINITE. More things are added as soon as you cross something off.

Simple steps to find peace

What we need to do is reduce the gap between what is happening and what we want to happen to zero.

I’ve created a meditation to do exactly that. It’s called “Everything’s OK”, it’s had nearly 8,000 listens and people say things like this after listening to it: “That was incredibly calming."

It couldn’t be more simple. It involves noticing sounds, thoughts, sensations and feelings and telling yourself “That’s OK.” For example you notice “My mind is busy” then you say to yourself “That’s OK.

“My shoulders are tense… that’s OK.”

You can listen to a free recording here. You might have to download Insight Timer first.

You still start to feel calmer within 10-minutes.

Why this works

• You are soothing or reassuring yourself.
• It helps you to accept everything you are experiencing rather than tense against it.
• You’re focusing on the here and now where quite literally everything is OK, and away from fearful thoughts about the future.

Further support

If you’d like to feel calmer, clearer and more resilient under pressure, let’s talk. Book a call to explore whether mindfulness coaching could support you.

“I came to Andy as I was feeling overwhelmed with life in general, everything was going wrong for me, I felt so low and did not know which way to turn.

Within one session Andy helped me to think more positively and to be calmer.

Speaking with Andy is like talking to an old friend, he makes me feel at ease instantly. I would recommend him highly!” - Ros