Stress is an everyday occurrence in our lives. We have little time to do all that we need to accomplish and it can become overwhelming. Managing stress can do wonders for not just your productivity but for your mental health. 

There are several ways in which to accomplish stress management; implementing a daily routine is the most effective way. A daily routine, allows you to be productive, and manage your stress; from the daily routine to do list; to medications/supplements, to keeping the same schedule. Below we break down your daily regimen for stress management. 

What Causes Stress

Before you can determine how you will manage your stress; you must first determine what causes stress. There are several factors to consider; internally and externally. While a majority of external stressors cannot be controlled by you and there is very little that you can do; your internal stressors are completely controlled by you and allows you to have manageable stress. 

External Stressors

• Major Life Changes

This can be the birth of a new baby, the death of a loved one, military deployment; a new job, or moving. 

• Relationship Difficulties

Various things can cause relationship struggles or even a divorce. It can also be new relationships and learning to know about each other and learn how to handle each other. 

• Work or School

Career Changes or a new job, adjusting to new management at work, problems with co-workers, changing schools, relocation for work or school, graduation, entering college, pursuing higher education later in life, the list goes on. 

• Financial Worries

Throughout life most people have struggled financially, and even if they haven’t, in the recession that we are in, they could be now. Not making enough money to afford living, not having money for emergencies, not affording new clothes for your kids, struggling to put food on the table. All of these are financial worries that keep a lot of people up at night. 

• Family Problems

Raising children, problems with siblings, disagreements with parents, a number of these are issues that you can face each day and cause you stress. 

• Being Too Busy

All of these problems above, can also cause the external factor of being too busy. We are too busy, when we don’t take the time for ourselves or to do the things we enjoy doing, because we are too busy doing the things we have to do. 

Most of these external factors, we have very little control over. We can’t control much about things happening around us, or with work, school or even family problems, but there are some that can be improved by improving your internal stressors. The three that we cannot really control are death, military deployments, or financial worries caused by the recession. 

Internal Stressors

• Inability to accept uncertainty

Life is full of uncertainties; we can either allow them to control us; or we can control how we think about them and handle them. If we allow every uncertainty to tear us down; we will be torn down to nothing. Allowing yourself to accept the unknown and expect that it could happen; but not letting it control all your thoughts and time is a good first step to minimizing internal stressors, and your overall stress. 

• Pessimism

Pessimists’ are notoriously known for expecting that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and having a negative attitude about it. Pessimism is a joy sucker and a very high stress impactor. When you switch from negative thoughts to positive thoughts; and turning negatives into positives, you minimize your stress because you’re not worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet. 

• Negative Self Talk

Negative thoughts are also tied to negative self talk; when you tell yourself negative things about yourself; you are setting yourself up. This may be caused by things other people have said to you; but having the understanding that you are not what other people think can allow you to turn the negative self talk into positive self talk. 

• Unrealistic Expectations

We all want the best in life. We want to succeed above all else. We set expectations high and sometimes these expectations aren’t realistic based on where we are in life. It’s not that you can’t achieve the absolute best; it’s that you can’t achieve it just yet, and setting unrealistic expectations will cause you to stress when you struggle to achieve those goals.  

• Stubbornness

Stubbornness can steal so much of our life, because we are too stubborn to set aside differences, see things in a different perspective, or refuse to bend a little to make things easier. This stubbornness will cause us stress, but by not being stubborn, we are then able to manage our stress more effectively because we are open to input and making things better in our lives. 

• All or Nothing Attitude

When we believe that we can have it all, which we can, but fall short at times; then we stress because we have not received what we want, exactly as we want. We can have what we want but sometimes we don’t get it exactly how we want; and that’s not good enough. 

• Perfectionism

When life and everything in it needs to be perfect; we are often setting ourselves up for failure, because perfection doesn’t exist. And when things aren’t going the way we want; we stress about getting it to where we want it. 

• Worry

Worrying can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. Worry is often associated with fear. However, there is one simple thing that can be determined by managing worry. If you can’t do anything about it, why are you worrying? You cannot do anything to change it. Accept that and move one. If you can control it, why are you worrying? Do something about it. Don’t worry about it. 

Steps to Creating A Stress Management Routine

You will never relieve yourself of stress completely; but you can minimize the stress and it’s impact on your life. A stress management routine can make a huge difference in having manageable stress or unmanageable stress. There are many things that can be done for these internal stressors (and some of your external stressors. 

Before you can start your routine; you will need to take inventory of all the things happening in your life and internally that are causing you stress. When you’ve taken this into consideration; you’re able to determine where you can start building your routine. Regardless of your internal and external stressors, your routine should be short and sweet. You’ve already got enough stress, you’re not trying to create more stress. 

1. Start with the internal factors. The easiest things to implement into your routine are things that have an internal control. And make sure to start small. Start with one thing, get it good and manageable and then look to the next. 
2. To determine where to start, you’ll want to look at the inventory and the largest impacting internal factors. What are the internal factors that keep you up at night?
3. Build your plan over time, it isn’t going to start improving right away, but baby steps can allow you to start seeing things a little more clearer. 
4. As you work through the creation of your routine, you could uncover previous things you hadn't thought about. Add these to your inventory and implement them into your routine as you can. 
5. Be open to suggestions, others have gone down this road before, don’t be afraid to ask for help and input from others who have minimized their stress. 

Tools for Your Stress Management Daily Regime 

You will use a multitude of tools as you manage your stress. These in themselves can be overwhelming, so don’t feel the need to use them all. If you try one and it doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. Nobody has the same stress, the same factors, the same story. Use what works for you. 

1. CBD, Delta 8 and Delta 9 are great tools in managing your stress, and should be included in your plan (if they work for you). Give them a try and determine if they should be included or not. We’ve linked to a few beginner CBD, Delta 8 and Delta 9 products to give a try. 
2. A journal is imperative for taking inventory, notes and making improvements. Find one you like or even a spiral notebook will do the trick; it doesn’t have to be pretty; it has to be effective. 
3. Apps are found everywhere for allowing you to track, monitor and change your routines, your thoughts, and even the things that are impacting your day to day life. Find the ones that focus on your weaknesses. A few we have found to benefit our team include: headspace, fabulous app and coursera for a variety of courses. If financial worries is not one of your stressors, you can also consider the use of a personal development or life coach. 

When dealing with stress and anxiety these are a few things that you can do to help yourself, your family, and your ability to have success without struggle, worry and pain. Most of our staff at Miracle CBD and More, uses CBD, Delta 8 or Delta 9 to manage our stress and anxiety and allow us to be successful and productive in our days. We have also used all these tools and resources we’ve spoken about to help ourselves, our customers, and our families to live a life that is less stress, and more reward.