Immediately Lower Your Stress Level

The other day, I was working on a pretty complex spreadsheet for a client. The kids are all home on Christmas break and the husband even had the week off.

As I was trying to concentrate, the older two started what I’m guessing was a wrestling match upstairs. It sounded like no less than a heard of wild animals running around my house. My husband walked in asking for help on some menial task that didn’t truly require me. Immediately following that the baby grabbed the toddler’s pigtail and pulled hard, causing her to scream and cry and as she pulled away, the baby fell, in turn, causing him to also scream and cry.


I can only describe stress as pressure with your face being the gauge. As the pressure continues to rise, you can actually feel blood rush to your cheeks (feeling warm), you might shake a bit and eventually the alarm (yelling) goes off. I’m guessing thats what I looked like after that morning and I’m guessing many of you have been there too. So what do we do when we feel our stress level rising?


5 Tips to Lowering Your Stress Level

1 – Be Proactive, Not Reactive

When we let stuff happen to us, we have only one option: react. It’s much harder to change the way you react to things then to try to be proactive about them. In a previous post I shared some of the most common reasons you might get stressed out  on a day-to-day basis. Read it and really take a look at yourself and the circumstances when you get stressed and try to identify what your triggers are. What are things that stress you out?

Then I want you to 1. try to avoid those situations and 2. be prepared for when they will happen when you cannot avoid them. So, for example, do you get stressed when you get ache-19005_1920distracted a lot (hint, that’s me)? So try to always do work that requires high levels of concentration and focus at a time and a place where you can avoid distractions for the most part. For me, it would’ve made better sense to lock myself in my office after the kids laid down for their nap to work on the spreadsheet. But this isn’t always possible, so I started making myself react to distractions from my family differently: I tell them I love them and why and then redirect them to a much more fun activity then bothering mom. It might not work for you, but its what I choose to do. You should come up with your own reactive actions or phrases so you are prepared when stress hits.

2 – Learn to Breath

If you feel the hight of stress hit you, sometimes all you need to do is take a second and breath. Its the same reason people don’t mind a quiet drive or running in the morning, it gives you a chance to refresh and truly assess a stressful situation (since most people tend to overreact at first).


I love, love, love Dr. Weil’s article on 3 different breathing techniques you can try to reduce stress. To read more about each technique and exactly how to do them, check out the article here.

  3. Breath Counting – A very simple breathing technique often used in Zen practice.

3 – Walk Away

No matter what you do, sometimes the best or only solution is simply to walk away. This is especially helpful if the stress is coming from a situation of conflict with another person.

argument-238529_1920Unfortunately, there are people out there that choose to start unnecessary conflict just for the case of arguing. Maybe they are having a bad day (or week or month) or maybe its just their personality. But you will only waste time and energy and stress yourself out if you choose to engage with them. So instead, just walk away. Don’t say anything, don’t turn around if they yell, just keep walking. The further you get away from the conflict, the lower your stress levels will fall.

4 – Delegate

Everyone knows to be productive, sometimes you have to delegate, but delegation is also a great way to relieve some stress. If you have too much on your plate or something changed and now you won’t have the time to do everything you needed to, just hand something off. Don’t tell me you are the only one who can do everything you’re doing. There is something (but most likely, several things) that you can delegate to someone. Whether its emailing someone for information, making a phone call, researching some new software, etc. Or even more personal things like watching the kids (hello babysitter, older siblings, spouse, family, friends, etc.), cooking dinner (delegate to Pizza Hut!), or cleaning (delegate to the kids maybe setting up a commission system).

If you don’t feel over stretched or over extended any more you won’t feel pressured – pressure = stress. Lower the pressure, lower the stress.

5 – Pray

I know not everyone is a religious person, but many are. No matter your religion, when you feel your stress peak, stop everything you are doing (I don’t care how important) and just girl-15599_1920pray. Say everything you are thinking and feeling. Ask for guidance, help, peace. But then make sure to just say thank you – list everything there is to be grateful for in that moment: your family, friends, air in your lungs, a roof over your head, food in the fridge, clients in your books, etc. etc.

Praying like this helps you to hand over the baggage of stress you are feeling and causes you to redirect your focus on being grateful for the things in your life that bring you joy and peace. Its like a natural anti-venom to the poisonous bite of stress.

I hope you are able to take these 5 tips and use them the next time a stressful situation comes up. Remember, stress is not something to take lightly as it can have catastrophic affects on your mind and body.

If you learned something today and want to learn more about stress, mindsets and productivity to be a more successful individual, feel free to subscribe to my blog! You will get first access to content and subscriber-only freebies.



18 thoughts on “Immediately Lower Your Stress Level

  1. One thing that has helped me lately is to be more mindful by meditating and being aware of my emotions, how I’m feeling, etc. Our bodies tell us so much about when we’re stressed if we’d just listen to them.


    • Yes! Too many people think its normal and its just how it will always be! As entrepreneurs, we need to focus on the core function of our business and making it grow and try to delegate as many of the other tasks as possible (admin, graphic design, etc).


  2. I agree that learning how to delegate is SUCH a useful skill. I usually find it so hard to ask for help because I feel like I should be able to do it all myself. But thats a recipe for burnout! Learning to breathe is soo helpful too 🙂


  3. Thank you so much for sharing these tips. I have gained many great takeaways from your article but the biggest is to breathe. That’s something that I can easily do while I’m at my desk at work.


    • Glad I could help! I’m the same way, suffered from anxiety for years, felt like I was losing my mind. Slowly took my life back!


    • Some people just don’t even realize how bad they are, and even if they do, they have no idea how to fix it. Next time he loses his cool, maybe make some suggestions (with a humble attitude) about how he might cope better. Just be careful, some people are quite happy being miserable and feel threatened if you suggest they don’t need to be!


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