10 Ways You Stress Yourself Out and What to Do About It

10 Ways:

1. Clutter: 

Clutter increases stress levels making it hard to focus, decreasing energy, negatively affecting relationships, triggering impulse control, increasing the chances for procrastination, and as a result decreasing your quality of life. 

As I say to clients, “outer calm, inner calm”. 

Clutter is defined by Merriam-Webster as 1. a crowded or confused mass or collection, things that clutter a place, or (interestingly) 2. interfering radar echoes caused by reflection from objects other than the target. 

Here, I’m talking about the first definition. 

2. Surrounding yourself w/ high-strung ppl

Emotions are contagious. This includes stress. The term “secondhand stress” describes the process. Shawn Archor and Michelle Gielan for the Harvard Business Review described the process as “a network of mirror neurons”. 

These neurons are why we catch each other’s yawns, smile when someone smiles, laugh when others laugh, and “catch” the stress and negativity of those around us. 

If you are surrounding yourself with negative and/or high-strung individuals, you are exposing yourself to secondhand stress. 

3. Saying “Yes” all the time.

Helping others is important. It’s one of my favorite things to do. However, often we say yes not because we want to or have the time or financial resources to, but because we’re afraid of disappointing someone. 

You will never be everything to everyone. It’s not humanly possible. It’s time to make peace with disappointing people. 

It’s also time to value yourself enough to honor your needs, priorities, and limitations. 

When you say yes all the time, you zap your financial, time, or energy resources. This leaves you with less to meet your own personal and professional needs, causing stress.

4. Ruminating and Catastrophizing. While different, both are critical and related. 

Rumination anxiety is when you are thinking repeatedly about something and attaching negative emotions to it. It is different than giving something careful consideration. 

Catastrophizing is when you assume that the worst will happen. This can occur with even the smallest trigger, setting you off on a mental spiral of negative “what if’s, and now this…”

It’s probably obvious that these both lead to stress. 

5. Multitasking

We just aren’t designed to do more than one task at a time. And in fact, we can’t. Our brain is still single-tasking. We are just asking it to switch back and forth between tasks really quickly. This causes stress. It may look like it’s more productive but you’re actually draining energy, decreasing productivity, and interfering with learning. (Becker et al., 2022).

6. Setting flawed goals

Most people know what SMART goals are. And know the difference between action and outcome goals. However, we still struggle with creating goals that are helpful and not harmful. 

Harmful goals can stress us out by holding us back and by making us feel incapable because we have failed to achieve what we set out to achieve. Perhaps the target was too high for this quarter because we didn’t adjust based on other conditions. Instead of recognizing and learning from this, we beat ourselves up. Or we drive ourselves into the proverbial ground in order to try and meet the goal the closer we get to the deadline. 

By decreasing our self-efficacy or depleting our sleep and energy, we stress out when our goals are unrealistic. 

We also decrease our well-being when our goals hold us back from discovering our true potential. Humans are called to fill their full purpose and potential. We languish when we don’t. 

Adam Grant and Emmanuel Acho had an interesting discussion on goals broadcast Nov 15 on Grant’s podcast.

7. Eating junk

It’s an unfortunate cycle. When we stress we tend to crave the very foods that make our stress worse: highly palatable junk foods. It’s a coping mechanism. I’ve done it, we’ve all done it. The problem is that what you eat and drink directly impacts how your body performs and renews itself (or not). “Junk” food indirectly increases stress by increasing inflammation. 

You can dig deeper here and here. 

8. Not exercising

Exercise is a fantastic way to decrease stress because it decreases adrenaline and cortisol, which are stress hormones in the body. It also stimulates the production of endorphins, which improve mood. Without exercise, those cortisol levels can stay high, and the endorphins low according to some studies. 

Through these interactions, a sedentary lifestyle has been linked to depression, anxiety, chronic stress, and other mental health outcomes. (Ellingson et al., 2918)

9. Procrastinating sleep

As Matthew Walker said, “Every disease that is killing us in developed nations has causal and significant links to a lack of sleep.”

Walker is considered one of the top researchers in the world on sleep.

10. Perfectionism

Perfectionism is not the same as the pride of authorship or high standards. It’s having high personal standards while also being overly self-critical. Perfectionism can become debilitating, increasing the risk of chronic stress and worry. And even anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. (Medical News Today)

What to do?:

The most important answer to all of these is depending on how deep some of your challenges are, you would be best served by getting support from either a counselor or a coach credentialed in the area you are looking into. For example a clinical therapist for mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, or a board-certified health & wellness coach for “work-life balance” support and accountability support for lifestyle goals.

The following suggestions are for those without underlying mental health conditions. 

1. Get organized and stay organized by following a plan that helps you tidy as you go rather than waiting for a single day to re-organize. That becomes too overwhelming and you will procrastinate until the clutter returns. You can work with a certified professional organizer to get you started. I have a couple in my network if you need help finding someone.

2. If you cannot or are not ready to remove yourself entirely from those individuals, do your best to limit your exposure. You are allowed to change your circle for the good of your health and happiness. 

3. Start practicing how to say no with small asks first. Decide how much “spare” time you have, know your priorities, and honor both by setting and enforcing boundaries that protect them.

4. Focus on what you can control and remind yourself that “whatever happens you’ll handle it”. Play out the worst-case scenario, too. It can help you feel prepared and realize the situation isn’t as dire as you think.

5. Single task. This will be hard to do. Set a goal to single-task for just an hour, or even 20 minutes to start and build up. You will in time, be more comfortable working in this way. Especially, when you start enjoying the benefits!

6. Revisit the definition of SMART goals and also action versus outcome goals. Try to strike a balance between goals that are realistic and still stretch you. 

7. Sneak in a veggie or fruit with other meals. Like spinach with your eggs or berries with dessert. Start small (see #6). For example, once a day for the next 7 days I will eat 4 cherry tomatoes with my eggs at breakfast. 

8. Sneak in movement like stairs over the elevator, parking farther away, using a water fountain on a different floor. Start small (see #6). For example, once a day for the next 7 days I will do 2 chair squats every time I sit down during work. 

9. Go. To. Bed. Create a bedtime routine for yourself the way a parent does for a child. Brush teeth, wash face, shower, read/listen to calming music, dim then shut off the lights. Decide when you need to wake up and work backward to give yourself 7-9 hours. Now, if you’re currently sleeping for only 5 hours, you might not be able to jump to 7. Even 6 hours to 7 could be a stretch. Try adding 5-15min at a time if you need to. 

10. As a recovering perfectionist, I like to remind myself that perfection is boring. Building the skill of self-compassion will go a long way toward helping you manage your perfectionism. You can learn about self-compassion here.