One of the best ways to fight and manage stress is by engaging in exercise activities. The good thing about exercising is that you don’t just reap rewards physically, but also mentally and psychologically. It’s for this reason that a lot of stress management coaches and experts will recommend getting into various forms of exercise activities to help reduce stress.
If you exercise, the more sensitive and in tune you are with the rest of your body, the more ready you are to monitor muscle tensions. In addition, stress management exercise activities also help improve your self esteem, thus, making you feel a lot less stressed and bothered. What exercise activities do is help you focus on something other than your daily problems, or what we call stressors.
Benefits of exercise-related stress management activities:
- Being more positively perceived by others, since a more attractive physical appearance leads other people to consider you more poised, sensitive, kind, sincere, and more socially and occupationally successful
- Having more self esteem due to feeling fit and feeling good about your body
- Decreasing feelings of depression and anxiety
- Feeling more alert and able
- Being better able to manage stress, with a resulting decrease in stress-related behaviors
- Being a better worker, since healthy men and women miss fewer days of work, have less illness, are involved in fewer accidents, and have a better attitude toward work
When we exercise, our psychological aspects are affected positively via the release of endorphins from our bodies. Endorphins are so-called ‘happy hormones’ that keep us alert and chipper. They function as opiates that aim at reducing pain and producing feelings of well-being.
Some of the activities you can engage in include sports, dancing, hiking, running. If you’re not much of an athlete, going shopping or walking around the mall or your neighborhood will already do the trick. It doesn’t really matter what activity you engage in, as long as it keeps your mind and body preoccupied.
Exercise activities, of course, should be done in moderation. Anything in excess is bad for us. Pick an activity that works for you and maintain a comfortable pace. Trying too hard and expecting too much will only worsen your stress levels. Remember, you’re looking for activities to manage your stress, not activities that would feed it.