Laugh
It’s a quite universal drug, curing many diseases like anger, irritation, and of course, stress. Also, it’s a perfect way to start a day. Every morning we can relax and laugh by reading humour webpage.

There are many sources of laugh: hilarious friends, comedies, humour broadcasting or, as mentioned above, funny webpages. Choose what you like and use it steadily.

Sport
While being under stress human body uses more resources than usually. While taking exercise human system uses more resources too. What does it mean? Well, that body uses double amount of usual resources. But after working out is finished, blood is saturated with endorphins, which works like narcotics. It makes us feel calm and happy, and that way stress is reduced.

Moreover, physical load is a great means to remove obsessions from your head. After spending two hours playing basketball, you really don’t think, how bad it is, that today you were late almost an entire minute to your workplace

And thirdly, the body of man, who constantly takes exercise, is more prepared to work under stress and has a better immune system. Have in mind, that immune system takes the most important part in staying healthy.

Imagination
Sport helps to remove obsessions from your head, but it’s possible to do it directly. Brain is filtering every peace of information it gets by using images, which are stored in our heads. Imagine beautiful and white clouds, which are slowly moving through sky, really really slowly. One cloud is like a smile. And it seems, that he is smiling to you. Later, you see small children jumping from one cloud to another. They are very very happy and smiling to you. If you were reading carefully and really imagining, then you should have felt that this visualization have more or less impact to your mood.

We can use this knowledge to reduce stress by changing one image by other. After tension starts to rise, visualize that you are in a desert island, there isn’t any problems, just many beautiful palm trees. The sea is lightly blue and calm. But don’t forget to solve the problem after coming back from that dream.

Breathing exercises
Breathing reflects our inner state. And by using various exercises we make an impact to our psychological and physical state.

There exists many breathing exercises: relaxing, phrenic, thoracic and other.

Yet I’ve tried only one. According to my experience, it’s very helpful to fight first wave of stress, when body is mobilized for steady responses to outside stimulus. But it isn’t effective against long time enduring tension. This exercise allows to calm and act on right decisions while being under high pressure.

That’s how you do it:

1. Make yourself comfortable, straight your back that air could easily flow into your lunges;
2. Take a very deep breath;
3. Breathe out every peace of air;
4. Hold your breath as long as you can. But not longer than needed to correctly complete the next step;
5. Slowly breathe in through your nose. Feel how oxygen is filling your lunges by going trough your nostrils;
6. Repeat 2-5 steps until you’ll calm down.

It works because of the following three reasons: firstly, human system is saturated with oxygen, which is vitally important for our bodies. Secondly, while making breathing exercise we concentrate on our inner processes. It makes our minds to leave the problem and calm down, because we don’t focus on the problem anymore. And thirdly, for some biological reasons human system emits endorphins when our lunges are totally empty. As I described above, endorphin is hormone of happiness and joy, and that’s why it takes and important part in relieving stress.

Repetition
This is a method which not only suppresses tension, but also enables to totally eliminate it from situations of the same kind .

Many humans are afraid of public speaking. After getting to the stage, they start to feel lots of stress symptoms, for example increased beating of heart, faster breathing and so on. But I believe you agree with the idea that if a man did it the thousandth time, when there would be no thrill. And the same thing is true for any other repeated situation, which causes irrational fears.

Why does it work? Because stress is caused by the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. When situation is repeated many times, it becomes familiar to us. So, we become relaxed, because we know what and how to do.

Other methods
If you know any not mentioned ways to overcome stress, please leave their description as a comment.

The length of article exceeded 1000, so I divided it into two parts. Next part is available here.

What is stress?

Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. The tension also can be evoked by negative factors, injuries, continuous rush and so on.

Stress or just a nervous tension plays an important role in our lives. It mobilizes energy of our body and prepares muscles for sudden responses. It’s a pity, that nowadays we normally don’t need to run from a big, white and angry bear. We simply need to beat some kind of every day problems and tension makes it even harder. While being under stress, brain cannot function under high level processing, because control of body is transmitted to more primitive brains, which can respond faster, but usually inadequate in these days world.

Human system isn’t supposed to be in the maximal level of mobilization for a long time. After some time form of stress changes. You could say that it becomes more gentle: there comes laziness, gloomy mood, no appetite, hardness to sleep.

Stress by itself is a defensive state of body for protecting us from difficulties. Small amount of stress allows us to work more efficient and faster. So, only continuous stress is a problem.

Sleep
Sleep is one of the two described methods, which is used before facing stressful situations. According to researches, a human having good sleep can solve problems more effectively. It means that he overcomes stress faster. Remember, that a short period of stress is beneficial, and only the long one becomes problem.

Also, individuals having a good rest have higher level of energy and more powerful immunity system. It makes human energy last longer even while being effected by physiological changes, caused by tension.

Thirdly, humans having enough sleep always are at a better mood, which reduces probability that the problem will cause stress for your body.

Usually, grown up individual needs 7-8 hours sleep. But it depends from environment, where you sleep. Light and noise increase the need for hours of sleep.

Friends and familiar objects
Recently, I listened to audio program of the famous psychoneuroimmunologist, named Nick Hall. There is described very interesting experiment about how stress affects monkeys. Stress level was measured by physiological factors, for example, how much more erythrocytes are in blood.

The monkey was closed in the cage, which was connected to electricity. After current was on, the level of stress was measured. It was assessed that if there was one more money in the den, which was well known by the tested one, than the level of stress reduces. If there is 12 monkeys familiar to the tested one, than level of stress was quite low in comparison with the original one. The most important factor is the familiarity of the monkeys, otherwise stress doesn’t get lower. Also, it works with familiar things.

I believe that it is why it works: while being in stress we encounter various fears, which forces us to search for safety. What is safety? It’s familiar places and conditions. Well, the conclusion is quite clear – you need to wrap up yourself with familiar things. Put photographs and symbols in your workplace. Often meet friends, even better to meet with many friends at once, because according to research, the more is better.

Other methods
Descriptions of alternative methods you can find in the next part of article, which is placed here.

Desire
The more you want something, the bigger obstacles you can overcome without any hesitation. However, eagerness often is not enough.

Other problem with desire is that often we think, but not want. I mean, how many people are thinking “I need to lose weight”, “I need to learn new language”, “I need to have more money”. There isn’t any more word want. You need to approach your problem from other side. Key is to do things you want. So, you change “I need to lose weight” in “I want to have less weight, because I would feel more comfortable, would have more stamina”. People often makes mistakes trying to seek other peoples goals or doing things they should, but it’s not how it works. You must want things to happen and visualise how great you would feel, if you succeeded.

Fear
There are many possibilities to kill fear. I will try to cover some of them using examples.

Inadequate fear. I want this blog to be public and with my real name, but actually I boggle the mind that every friend of mine are able to read this. So, why I am doing this? Because this type of fear is stupid. If I write about what I feel, who I am and what I am doing trough my life, what is the worst thing that could happen? They will stop being my friends, because they learned who actually I am. That’s just silly. Even if they stopped being my friends, it would just mean that we were on different paths and my blog just made it to happen a little sooner.

Next example, you want to ask a person for a date, but you are afraid of “no”. Why this fear is inadequate? The worst thing which could happen is “no”, but if you don’t ask for a date, you get straight “no”.

So, first method for overtaking you fear is to find out why your fear is inadequate.

Fear of failure. This type of fear often goes along with risk. You want to start your own business, but when your head fills up with minds like what if I will fail, what if I will get in debt and so on. This fear is reasonable, because 5 of 10 new business fails in first 5 years and 4 of them fails in next 5. Well, it’s what I have heard. How to overcome this fear? Firstly, start thinking how your life will look if you succeed. Secondly, make plans, calculation and other things to decide if you have a chance. It includes learning new things. It will make you more confident. Thirdly, today is the age of information and web. You don’t need to be 100% busy in your own business. Start with small steps and move forward. You can still be in your current job, but at the same moment have your own business. Fourthly and most importantly, people regret things which they didn’t do more then things they did and failed. Image that you are 50-60 years old and working in the same job as before 30 years, instead of having your own business. The mind that I could have did one or another thing, but didn’t, would kill me.

Other approach. Often I don’t fight directly against fear. I have developed my mind to the state, that if I am afraid of doing something, but I know that it’s right thing to do, then I must do it. How it works? For example, I want to ask a person for a favour, but last time it slated me for asking. So, I feel fear, because it could happen again. But at the same moment, I know, that I must to do it, because I feel fear. I made fear to be additional motivation to do things: if fear exists, then I just must do it.
If you want to develop this habit, start doing things you are afraid. Begin with small fears, later move to bigger ones. Soon you will start noticing your fear like pointer to things, which you must do as soon as possible.

Summary

There are methods covered in this article to overcome fear:

• Find out why your fear is inadequate. Think, why to fear such thing is stupid;
• Prepare for success: learn, plan and start in small steps. People regret things they didn’t do, but not things they did and failed;
• Make fear your friend and additional motivation.

And don’t forget to really want things, not just think you need them.