How To Manage Excess Stress

My name is Dr Gary McGowan, Doctor, trainer, and physiotherapist here at Triage, and I’m here to talk to you about how to manage excess stress. While we have an incredibly comprehensive article on foundational stress management, I do realise that most people want to quickly get to the good stuff, and learn exactly how to manage excess stress without all of the background information. So that is what we are going to discuss in this article.

Now, you may be wondering “why am I the person to give you advice on how to manage excess stress?”, and the reason I can help you with this is primarily through lots of personal experience managing stress, combined with my extensive study into the area of what actually works for stress management in the real world, and my experience of actually coaching many people to better manage their stress. As a coach, I help people with various aspects of their health, their exercise, their nutrition, their sleep and overall lifestyle, and a key pillar to improving all of these is good stress management. So I have spent a lot of time figuring out what actually works in the real world, and what doesn’t.

On a personal note, I have had to figure out effective stress management practices, as I have a lot going on in my life. I’ve just finished medical school myself, which is an intensive four years of studying, and before that, I studied physiotherapy for four years. During that time at University, I was also working for Triage. Both of these took up a lot of my time, and running a successful coaching and education business alongside intensive study at University was very stressful. So I had to develop some pretty robust stress management practices, and in doing this, I quickly realised that a lot of the stuff that people tell you to do for stress management is really just not all that effective.

As a result, I have cut through a lot of fluff, and in this article, I am going to walk you through the things that I personally use, and that I use with my clients to manage excess stress.

How To Manage Excess Stress

Prioritisation and Planning

The most important thing in learning how to manage excess stress is learning how to prioritise. You need to figure out what are the priorities in your life. You need to figure out your non-negotiables, and you need to create a hierarchy.

What is the hierarchy of your priorities?

Break things down into P1 (Priority One), P2, and P3 areas or tasks. This means that when you wake up in the morning and you feel overwhelmed, you look at your to-do list, and it says, ‘Here are the P1s, here are the P2s, and here are the P3s.’ This now means that all of these things aren’t floating around randomly in your head anymore.

You’re able to focus on those P1s. You know these are the things that are most important to accomplish that day, and you can ensure you assign your focus appropriately to them. Then, if you have time and capacity, you may get to the P2s and P3s, but those P1 things are the first things you need to take care of.

You see, a lot of us are dealing with stress, and we feel that it’s just to do with what we have to do, but it’s very heavily influenced by the way that disorganised task list interacts with our psychology.

We know that our psychological state and our mindset can modify the stress response from a given set of stimuli. Therefore, the person who has their to-do list in order, with a very clear list of priorities, and has a plan of when they’re going to do each thing, they’re going to have less stress than the person whose life is just chaos.

The chaotic person knows there are a hundred things they need to do, however, none of them are written down, none of them are prioritised, and none of them are planned out. That is just chaotic, and that is going to lead to quite a bit of stress and anxiety, above and beyond the actual stress of the tasks that need to be completed. So, the first thing you need to get in order is your planning and your prioritisation.

Unfortunately, most people won’t put the time into actually spending some time planning out their day (and life), and they feel that this is just another stressor that has to be dealt with. However, while there may be some stress associated with starting to plan things out, it does actually significantly increase your ability to handle stress. So don’t skip this!

Live In Accordance With Your Values

the second important thing you need to do so you can better manage your stress is to start setting up your life in accordance with your goals, values and preferences. This is really important. A lot of us fall into saying yes to different things or living in a certain way because other people live like that. They were never actually our goals, values or preferences to begin with, we were just following the crowd.

For me, throughout medical school and running the business, I knew that I had to prioritise the things that were of most value to me. And if I was going to engage in any hobbies or extracurricular activities, I knew that they had to be in line with my preferences and values. When you do things that feel valuable to you and that you really enjoy, you feel far less stressed. You’re a happier person. You have more joy in your life. This is pretty obvious, but you would be surprised by how many people simply don’t do this. They are at the whim of other people’s goals, values and preferences.

If we can combine doing the things we like more often and living in the way that we want to live with prioritisation and planning skills, stress is much easier to handle. Those two things for me are the core ingredients to start managing stress for the individual who has a lot going on.

So, if you’re thinking, ‘You know, I’m not sure what you mean, Gary. Preferences, values, like what are you talking about?’ I would start by simply asking myself, ‘What are my hobbies?’ So when you have free time, what are you doing with that free time?

The person who has no hobbies is often watching Netflix and scrolling their phone, and then maybe they feel guilty after those activities. You know, you rarely feel better after an hour and a half of scrolling Instagram. People often feel a little bit guilty, like they’ve wasted their time. Whereas if you were more deliberate in terms of spending your time on meaningful hobbies, rewarding hobbies, and fun hobbies, then that free time that you have would give you the leisure that you need to be recharged, to reduce your stress, and thus to be more productive when you go back to those prioritised tasks. This could be playing an instrument, it could be going to dance classes, it could be reading a book, and it could even be watching Netflix if it’s a series or a movie that you enjoy.

The key is to be deliberate in your actions, and the only way to be deliberate, is to be clear on your goals, values and preferences.

Exercise and Nutrition

As we move beyond these first two areas that I’ve talked about, you get to all the conventional stress management tips that you often hear in the health and fitness industry. Of course, I recommend exercising and eating well because if you exercise regularly, your stress is going to be better controlled, and that, along with good nutrition, is going to leave you in a place where you have better energy levels, that are perceived well-being, and, of course, better health overall.

Sleep

Getting enough sleep is also something that’s really important for managing stress. When we’re sleep-deprived, we don’t handle stress quite as well. We have an exaggerated stress response, and we’re also just not as productive. We’re not as cognitively sharp. Therefore, if you have a lot of tasks that are overwhelming you and you’re trying to do them in a sleep-deprived and overly stressed state, they’re probably going to take you longer, and the results are going to be of poorer quality. Therefore, this can end up amplifying your stress long term.

Of course, during busy periods at work or during exams, sleep might have to be sacrificed a little. But long term, you want to make sure that you are prioritising the quantity (ideally seven to nine hours), and quality of your sleep. You can drastically improve your stress by getting better sleep.

Enjoy Your Environment

Other adjuncts can also be helpful for people. For example, some people find that nature has a strong de-stressing effect. Personally, I feel this too. If I get out for a walk that’s in the woods, in the mountains, near lakes or green spaces, this dramatically improves my stress. Getting out in nature is the type of thing I like. I like the sound of the birds. I like the trees around me. I like to hear the stream or the river. I find that very relaxing. For you, it might be something else. It might be the seaside. Maybe you’re very strange, and it’s the hustle and bustle of the big city. Whatever it is that does it for you, we just want to spend time in environments that reduce our stress. If you can do this while getting some activity in, such as walking, then you are really on to a winner!

Meditation and Prayer

Tools like meditation can also be helpful. There are various forms of meditation: transcendental, mindfulness meditation, incorporated with movement or just stillness, focus on mantras or the breath. All these meditative tools are things that people use, and many people find them to be very beneficial for stress management, along with tools like breathwork. Along similar lines to meditation, as part of organised religion, prayer is also something that can be stress-relieving for many people.

Supplementation

As we run down the list of things we can do to better manage excess stress, we get to things that are going to be less likely to have a potent effect, such as supplementation. In some cases, supplementation might augment the stress response or make you more resilient to stress. For example, there is some small bit of evidence related to ashwagandha and some other supplements that might have a positive effect. But these really aren’t all that effective for most people, unless they have robust stress management practices already in place. This is where most people focus when it comes to stress management, but unfortunately, it is the least effective area to focus on for stress management.

We cover a few more stress management strategies in our comprehensive article on stress if you do want to know where to focus your attention.

How To Manage Excess Stress Conclusion

Overall, for those of you who are trying to manage excess stress, I recommend prioritising the things that I discussed at the start of the article, which are prioritisation and planning, and then spending your non-work time or your free time on things that are in line with your values and preferences and bring you joy. These are the things that work for me, and the things that I see most of my clients benefit from.

If this content is something that you resonate with, that you struggle with, as it is for a lot of our clients, then we might be able to help you on a one-to-one basis through our online coaching services. With coaching, we can look at the exact barriers you’re coming up against and see how we can overcome those barriers and set you up to better handle your stress.

We also cover stress extensively on our nutrition coaching certification course, if you are a coach and are interested in learning more about actually coaching someone to better stress management. If you just want to learn more about all things health and fitness, then feel free to explore our free content and subscribe to our email newsletter. If you prefer visual content, then subscribe to our YouTube channel and Instagram!