Stress and depression go hand in hand. Indeed, if you are dealing with stress on a regular basis, you are more likely to become depressed.
Think about it: the more stressed you are, the less you enjoy life. Also, the more stressed you are, the less peace of mind you have, and this interferes with the quality of your sleep, leaving you feeling perpetually fatigued, frazzled, and easily irritated.
All of this contributes to depression. For this reason, if you want to be happier and depression-free, it’s important that you learn how to eliminate stress, which has an adverse affect on your well-being.
Right now you’re going to learn how to reduce stress naturally, without any drugs, pills, or medications. This is how to handle stress in the best way possible.
How to deal with stress peacefully
One of the biggest reasons so many people struggle with stress is that they think of stress as being some sort of a dangerous enemy. For example, if you’re focused on how to fight stress, you’re approaching stress as if it’s some sort of monster to beat.
Guess what? Feeling like you regularly have to fight an evil enemy is extremely stressful. So it makes no sense to waste any time learning how to combat stress, because putting yourself in battle mode like this will keep you stressed.
On the other hand, it also doesn’t make any sense to learn how to cope with stress, the way many people do, because if you’re using coping with stress techniques, you’re just living with stress rather than getting rid of it. In this way, you also remain feeling stressed.
So what is the best way to deal with stress?
It’s very simple: see the feeling of stress as being like a ringing fire alarm. Just like a ringing fire alarm alerts you that you can improve your situation in some way, the feeling of stress also alerts you that you can improve your situation in some way, like by improving your thinking, actions, or environment.
So it clearly doesn’t make any sense to fight stress or cope with it, just like it doesn’t make any sense to fight a ringing fire alarm or put up with its shrill ringing without doing anything.
Instead, it makes sense to address what’s making you feel stressed in the first place and take care of it as soon as possible. Just like a ringing fire alarm stops ringing once you put out the fire, the feeling of stress peacefully and naturally goes away once you improve your thinking and situation in some way.
How to lower stress by seeing no value in it
One of the quickest ways to stop being stressed is to simply see no value in it, other than how it alerts you to opportunities for improvement in your life, and to see a great deal of value of being calm and relaxed, instead.
Here’s why: when your mind appreciates that being stressed is of no value to you, your mind will be far more cooperative letting go of stressful, negative thoughts that make you feel stressed in the first place.
For this reason, make sure you don’t see any value in being stressed, like thinking that stress somehow energizes and motivates you to get things done, or thinking that stress is normal and therefore good for you.
After all, stress ultimately leaves you feeling exhuausted, and makes it harder for you to think clearly, so it clearly doesn’t help you get more things done. Also, even if stress is completely normal, it still isn’t any good for you, since it has a negative effect on your well being.
The only helplful thing stress does is it alerts you that there are opportunties for improvement in your life, and that it’s in your best interest to improve your thinking and situation in some way to eliminate the stress. Other than this, the stress is of no value to you whatsoever.
Once this is completely clear to you, your mind will naturally help you replace stressful, negative thinking with more positive ways of thinking that make you feel more calm and relaxed and help you enjoy greater peace of mind.
This very beneficial, especially since staying free of stressful negative thoughts is how to prevent stress from even occurring in the first place.
How to get over stress by improving your thinking
If you think about things negatively, you will definitely experience more stress in your life. For this reason, it’s very important that you stop ruminating and replaying negative thoughts in your head, since this is what actually creates the stress and worrying.
To fully appreciate how much the way you think about things matters, consider how you can become extremely stressed about losing your job, or feel completely calm and relaxed about it, depending entirely on how you think about this situation.
If you think thoughts like “I’m a loser, because I lost my job”, or “I’ll never be able to pay my bills and survive”, or “Losing my job was the worst thing that could have happened to me”, you’ll naturally experience a great deal of stress and worry about things.
On the other hand, if you think thoughts like “I’m a great person, even if I lost my job”, and “One way or another I’ll find a way to pay my bills and survive”, and “Losing my job could be a blessing in disguise, since it opens up other opportunities for me”, you’ll naturally feel more calm and relaxed and worry-free.
The important point here, is that how you think about things matters a great deal, and ultimately determines whether you will feel stressed or not. So if you’re feeling stressed, changing your thinking is how to be stress free and happy very fast.
Indeed, since you have a choice in how you think, it just makes more sense to think in ways that make you feel more calm and relaxed, and help you enjoy better quality sleep, rather than choosing to think in stressful ways that make you feel like a nervous wreck, and leave you exhausted.
How to relax your mind from stress fast
By far, the most common, stressful negative thought that you can have is to think that you can’t accept or handle certain things.
For example, if you think that you can’t accept or handle depression, you will naturally be very stressed out about depression. Similarly, if you think that you can’t accept or handle losing a job, you will naturally be very stressed out about your job loss.
This type of thinking is extremely stressful, because if you think that you can’t accept or handle certain things, you feel powerless and helpless to do anything about them. Indeed, you feel completely vulnerable to something you automatically assume is bad in some way.
So guess what happens? Your mind keeps trying to warn you about this potential danger that you presumably “can’t” accept or handle.
For example, if you think you can’t accept or handle depression, your mind will repeatedly remind you that you’re depressed, because it thinks that this is an important danger for you to consider. For similar reasons, your mind will repeatedly remind you about a job loss you think you “can’t” accept or handle.
In such a way, you become perpetually stressed, and the stress has a negative effect on your life.
Fortunately, you can learn how to relax when stressed very quickly, just by learning how to get rid of the stressful, negative thought that you can’t accept or handle whatever you’re dealing with at the moment.
How to relieve stress quickly: be more calm in 2 minutes
Right now, you’re about to become a much more calm and relaxed person in less than 2 minutes, just by appreciating that you can accept and handle anything in a constructive manner.
To appreciate this, you’ve got to appreciate that that belief that you can’t accept certain things is nonsensical. Clearly, you can accept anything, since whether you accept something or not is just a choice you can make.
For example, you can choose to accept being depressed, if you want. This is simply your choice.
Furthermore, it’s important to appreciate that it’s nonsense to believe you can’t handle certain things, because if anything occurs, you definitely can and will handle it, whether you like it or not. It’s really just a question of how you’re going to handle it.
For example, if you become depressed, it’s not a question of whether you can handle it. If you’re depressed, you’re already handling it. The only question is how you’re handling it, and if you want to take steps to handle it in a way that helps you stop being depressed faster and easier.
One you appreciate that you can accept and handle anything, it’s like you’ve “hacked” your brain in a powerful way that makes you always feel more calm and relaxed and less stressed, because you’ve successfully “debugged” one of the most common, stressful negative thoughts you could have.
How to beat stress and depression: 4 steps
In summary, you can immediately stop being stressed and feel more calm and relaxed by changing your thinking. Indeed, if you ever find yourself being stressed, use the following steps to reduce and eliminate the stress in 5 minutes or less.
- See lots of value in being calm and relaxed, and no value in being stressed out.
- Appreciate that by replacing stressful, negative thoughts with more positive thoughts, you can immediately eliminate stress and feel more calm and relaxed.
- Appreciate that you can accept and handle anything constructively, no matter what it is, since this is the single biggest thought that will naturally help you eliminate stress and enjoy greater peace of mind.
- If you identify other stressful negative thoughts, go ahead and replace them with more positive thoughts to feel even better. (You can use the Negative Thinking Buster to help you with this.)
By following these steps, you will naturally experience less stress, and you will find it easier to become and remain depression-free. So be sure to follow these steps to eliminate any stress you might have.
Next: How To Be Optimistic & Stop Being Pessimistic →
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Section 7 Lessons:
- How to handle negative emotions with confidence
- How to get rid of bad feelings intelligently
- How to stop feeling sorry for yourself
- How to get rid of stress and depression
- How to be optimistic & stop being pessimistic
- How to get rid of anxiety and depression fast
- How to get rid of guilt