Do you take notes?
Work, family, friends, me-time… Life is busy. Not surprising if you experience stress. To ensure that you prevent burnout, we share five tips from a neurosociologist.
Mental state
Stress can have major consequences for your mental state. A few stressful weeks can already cause a short fuse and even your IQ can drop by 15 points.
How can you prevent or at least reduce the unpleasant effects of stress? Neurosociologist Ellen Botman from Happy Brain Clinics gives tips. She shares five scientifically proven tips that can help you combat stress. The best news? You can apply them yourself.
1. Welcome stress as your friend
“Don’t see stress as a disease-causing problem, but see it as your friend. You do this by thinking: ‘welcome stress, you are now preparing my body to take action’ when you feel stressed. This reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease due to stress from 43% to 0%.”
2. Follow the news less
“Our brain interprets the headlines as ‘common’. If you follow the news excessively, it will lead to mental and even physical stress. Follow the news less often – or even not at all. Then you can’t worry about it.”
3. Listen to classical music
“It is not without reason that subliminal music is recommended to play to calm babies down. Bach’s music in particular is known to calm your brain. Put it on as background music or grab your headphones and listen to Binaural Beats where your left and right ears hear two different sound frequencies. Because your brain looks for the middle between the two frequencies, your head automatically becomes calm.”
4. Be grateful, and write it down.
Did you know that being grateful can have a very positive effect on your brain? This is evident from a lot of research. According to the neurosociologist, this is because you regulate your body’s stress response and therefore make you more resilient.
“If you write down by hand what you are grateful for, you kill two birds with one stone. Because writing by hand gives you peace of mind and allows you to process events better. It is also good for cooperation between different parts of the brain. It is also better to write down important information that you want to remember by hand rather than typing it in. Because writing often makes you remember it better.”
5. Pretend you have travel time
“Even if you work (partly) from home these days, it is necessary to ‘be on the road’. Take a twenty minute walk five times a week. Use the time you normally spend on the way to work for this. Then you immediately have a good demarcation between work and private time. The fact that the whole of the Netherlands walks is good news: exercise reduces stress, helps your brain function better and even boosts your immune system.”
Source: Marie Claire | Image: Adobe Stock
