5 tips for a meaningful and fulfilling new year.
As a New York City based stress management specialist, Dr. Rahe shares her top 5 tips for improving your relationship with yourself, others and environment as we enter into the new year. Hint: it all starts with managing your stress.
As the years winds down, we enter this natural time period of reflection. A lot of people “poo-poo” new year resolutions, however, I find it to be a great time to pause for a moment and reflect upon all of the life experiences of the past year and determine a plan for growth in the new year.
There is plenty of literature available on the impact stress has on our ability to participate meaningfully in daily life events and to be present in both mind and body. Perhaps you’re looking to spend more quality time with your family, run a marathon, pursue a new job, visit Europe or read more books. Maybe you’re hoping to be more present in your day-to-day, laugh more with your spouse or learn another language. Whatever it may be, appropriate management of your body’s stress responses will be imperative for your success, patience and discipline in sticking with your resolutions.
Focus on improving your response to stressors, not eliminating stressors. The kicker here is that daily life is full of necessary stressors and our body is constantly modulating and adjusting its’ internal state relative to the stressor present. There is actually significant scientific literature that indicates that trying to control the external factor that is “stress” results in MORE stress (that’s right, I said what I said). Stress allows us to focus, perform, and stay safe when it is activated efficiently. On the other hand, a maladaptive stress response can cause us to snap at loved ones, make clerical errors in the office or shut down all together. If you’re someone who says, “I just have a lot of stress” or I’m just stressed out”, consider reframing that to “my stress response is inefficient right now”. This is a simple reframing strategy to begin shifting the way we view stress and our capacity for stress. Not to sound too hippy-dippy but you have to look within (cringing at myself). When it comes to managing stress, you have to focus on creating a more efficient response to stress and not the actual stress itself. Basically, “well if he would have just not ____ then I wouldn’t have reacted like ___!” is not going to get you anywhere. Stress is a necessary, unavoidable, driving force in leading a meaningful life as long as you are able to effectively manage your stress response and not allow it to manage you.
Practice ‘low and slow’ breaths instead of ‘deep and full’ breaths. If you are a patient of mine, you already know where I’m going with this. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been told to “take a deep breath and just relax”. Now raise your hand if that deep breath actually relaxed you. *crickets* That’s what I thought. What most of us don’t realize is that those deep, big, breaths will actually increase our body’s stress response. Instead, shift your focus to lowering your breath so that most of your breath is felt in your abdomen instead of your chest, which will draw oxygen deeper into the meat of your lungs, optimizing gas exchange. Now, slow down your inhales and exhales, but especially your exhales. During exhalation, we trigger the ‘rest and digest’ component of our nervous system. Therefore, if we increase the time we spend exhaling, we naturally relax our nervous system. Before your next presentation or meeting, I recommend counting to 4 or 5 on your inhales and 5 or 6 on your exhales to regulate your nervous system and enhance your performance.
Learn to meditate. Here we go again with the hippy-dippy stuff, but stay with me. Meditation is a real, powerful and scientific tool that has amazing benefits…when done properly. Achieving an actual meditative state is something that takes time and practice. Just because you lay down, close your eyes and listen to a meditation at the end of your yoga class doesn’t necessarily mean you are meditating and therefore you may not be experiencing the real therapeutic effects of meditation. This is often why people give up and say it doesn’t work for them. If you are interested in learning to meditate, I recommend starting with focused meditations before moving onto body awareness or expanded awareness practices. Learning to meditate can be a frustrating process and is definitely a challenge, however, almost everyone is capable of achieving a meditative state and the benefits are worth the effort. Just remember, you have to walk before you run.
Participate in psychosomatic exercises. Psychosomatic medicine is the study of psychological, physiological and behavioral factors and the relationship between these factors and physical wellbeing. Psychosomatic medicine acknowledges the interplay between all of our bodily processes and emphasizes the importance of addressing all of these processes in order to obtain true health and wellbeing. Therefore, psychosomatic exercises are specific ways of physically moving the body that can have positive impacts on mental, physiological and behavioral health. Yoga and Pilates style movements are great places to start in incorporating psychosomatic exercise into your routine.
Seek professional guidance…and don’t feel bad about it. Just like you might consider a personal trainer to improve your physical fitness, a stress management consultant can be an invaluable asset to your health and wellness routine. If you notice any of the following, it may be a sign to consult with a stress management specialist: constant fatigue, irritability, muscle and joint stiffness, flare up of autoimmune diseases, poor sleep, etc.
If personal growth in any capacity is a part of your 2024 plans, there is no getting around the importance of a well-balanced and regulated nervous system aka appropriate management of your body’s stress response. Here’s to a fulfilling new year full of peace and purpose…cheers!
