Stress Awareness Month - Taking Control and Embracing Your Strengths
April is Stress Awareness Month which highlights the impact that stress has on our lives and the lives of those around us.
If you are looking for further support overcoming perceived limitations, identifying your strengths and working towards your goals, take a look at our bespoke Coaching & Skills Development services.
Stress has both a physical and psychological impact on our ability to function and we all too often dismiss the warning signs, adopting the mantra of “just getting on with it”. There is a difference between good stressors that inspire and motivate us to achieve our best whether in competitions, sports, and work, and negative stressors that stimulate fear, anxiety and physical reactions of heart racing and fast breathing, among many other things.
Negative stress that is built up over time can have long term effects that make you sick or burn you out - and the Coronavirus pandemic has aggravated stress levels to a whole new degree. People are coping with isolation from their support networks, adjusting to working and studying remotely, struggling to stay employed and juggling caring responsibilities. During this month there has never been a more important time to check our emotional fitness, our resilience, and our ability to ‘bounce back’.
The first step in making positive changes is identifying the signs of stress and then putting in place the mechanisms for you that will make a change and help to alleviate the debilitating impact stress can have on our lives. There are small changes we can make from eating healthier, getting out into the fresh air, taking exercise, resting, and not being so hard on yourself.
In my role as an Executive Coach, I am in a privileged position to work with individuals and give them the safe space to explore their stressors and to create bespoke workable solutions. If you only do one thing for yourself this month, take 10 minutes to think about the elements of your life that you have the power and control to change. By recognising where we can make small changes, we are able to start reducing our stress and living our lives more fully.
Karen Cairney, CEO Cairney & Company