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Feeling Tense? A 3-Step Plan to Reduce Your Everyday Triggers

 
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What does pressure feel like? Is it tension in your body? A headache that won’t go away no matter what you do? Is it a queasy feeling in your stomach or a looming fear of what may happen if you don’t perform up to standard? 

However you define pressure, if it’s become a constant in your life, chances are it’s wreaking havoc. 

What can you do?

Plenty!

While escaping all of life’s responsibilities may not be realistic, there are things you can do to make these responsibilities FEEL less burdensome and evoke less of a stress-response.

First thing’s first: Below are a few simple tips you can use immediately to reduce your level of physical and mental tension:

• Go for a walk outdoors and feel yourself invigorated by the fresh air and sunlight- choose a natural setting, somewhere picturesque, away from loud city traffic, if possible.

• Take 10 deep, cleansing breaths; imagine breathing in fresh energy on the inhalation and picture tension leaving your body with every exhalation.

• Give yourself a head massage with your fingertips for immediate relief from cranial tension. Use the pads of your fingers and work the entire surface area of the head. Use the index and middle fingers side-by-side to make slow circular strokes at the temples for extra relaxation. 

• Take a time-out to engage in a short open-awareness meditation. This meditation style calls for you to simply relax, close your eyes, and allow yourself to breath easily while maintaining a gentle awareness of the thoughts that enter your mind without holding onto them. As thoughts arise, you are to notice them, without judgement or attachment, and then let them pass out of your awareness. In this way, you are neither trying hard to prevent thoughts nor to hold thoughts. You are just noticing them coming and going. 

Next, create a 3-Step Plan for avoiding tension buildup:

  1. Identify tension triggers, which can be defined as

    a certain task, person, time of day, thought, etc. that makes you tense

  2. Find a way to avoid/delegate/ or reduce the impact of the trigger

•AVOID: literally, AVOID this trigger

Example: “Taking Maple Avenue to work always stresses me out.”

Solution: AVOID taking Maple Avenue to work. 

•DELEGATE: identify someone who can take over this trigger for you

Example: “Always being the one to deliver the bad news to the boss on Fridays makes my stomach churn.”

Solution: Delegate others in the office to take turns giving the end-of-week report. 

•REDUCE THE IMPACT: reposition when this trigger occurs during the day, reposition other positive support measure around the trigger

Example: “My whole body feels tense after a long, focused day in front of my computer.” 

Solution: Build in mini breaks (you can set the timer on your phone) to get up from your desk to walk around, get a cup of water stretch and let your eyes take a break from the screen. On these days, commit to taking lunch away from your desk, or, at least away from your computer monitor. 

3. Rename and reframe the feeling

Tension is real, and it is the by-product of stress. Stress is also real but it is dependent upon our reaction to the world around us. 

We have a conscious choice in how we respond to our world. 

We can choose stress or we can choose to challenge stress

I am not suggesting that this change will occur overnight, it must be practiced repeatedly, just as with any new habit we wish to develop. 

The next time you notice yourself having a knee-jerk response to a situation that involves a negative, stress-based reaction, CHALLENGE it!

Ask yourself: 

Can I be intrigued by this instead? 

Can I be amused by this? 

Can I see this as a game or as part of a game or as a twist in a game? 

I encourage you to get creative! Don’t keep allowing yourself to run into the “stress ditch.” You’ve been there, you know what it feels like. It’s time to travel to other places. Remember, you have the power to chart the course from here on out!

 

The 5 Elements of BioStacking

 
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Human Performance starts with our mindset. BioStacking leverages a handful of neuroscience tools to enhance human performance and well-being. Below is a brief description of the five elements of BioStacking that help you achieve Flow state easier and more frequently by balancing your brain’s neurotransmitters to give you what you need to perform at your highest level.


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Focused Attention (1)

Sitting in quiet stillness, with focused attention to the breath, to a “mantra” or repeated phrase, or simply with a gentle softness of all that enters your awareness is a century-old practice known as meditation that is now scientifically proven to be phenomenally advantageous to our health. Meditation establishes new pathways in the brain and syncs the brain to a rhythm conducive to deep states of healing.

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Mindfulness (2)

In-the-moment awareness can be practiced at anytime, anywhere, by anyone. The habit of bringing mindfulness to more moments in your day enhances the richness of your life by allowing you to live in your present experience. Without a mind that is dwelling on thoughts of the past or anticipating, planning or worrying about what has yet to come, you are afforded the gift of taking pleasure in the now.

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Future Visions (3)

Do you know that your brain processes images, both real and imagined, in the same way? Capitalizing on this fact is what lies at the center of the visualization practices. Techniques such as guided imagery have been used successfully to help illicit physical changes in the body such as calming respiration and heart rate and even increasing strength. Visualization also can be employed to help you build and reach towards the future version of yourself that you wish to step into. Research in this area has proven that where the mind goes, the body follows.

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Metacognition (4)

Those of us with the greatest ability to lead, to change, to grow, and to be innovative will also demonstrate the ability to understand how we arrive at our mental conclusions. This is known as metacognition, or how we think about how we think. Even if you have good habits of reviewing the steps of your thought processes, the field of metacognition still has plenty to offer you in the form of memory techniques, learning devices, and overall approaches to comprehension that will transform the way you move through both your social and your professional world.

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Recovery (5)

What was once thought of as motherly advice is now proven essential to our very capacity to excel physically and mentally: good nutrition and adequate sleep are both essential. “Good nutrition” calls for incorporating specific foods into your diet regularly, which have been proven to enhance cognitive function, learning, and memory. And, while adequate sleep at the end of the day is critical for recovery, so are regular periods of non-sleep rest. Learning the function of down-time and its impact on creativity, productivity and mood level may change the way you prioritize being on-task 24/7.