Increasing Your Stress Tolerance: Tips & Tools

When you believe that anything is possible, you eliminate barriers to achievement

Life comes with stresses that drain energy. Since you can't remove stress altogether, you need to boost your ability to cope, so that you’ll have the energy and confidence to face any sort of challenge. Stress tolerance can help you manage demanding workloads, establish clear priorities, meet deadlines, and perform well under pressure. Hiking your sense of optimism also adds to your ability to deal with stress.

Here’s what you need to do to control stress and hike optimism:

Tips and Tools for Increasing Your Stress Tolerance

1. Prioritize daily tasks and eliminate non-essentials.
2. Build your emotional resilience.
3. Leverage your energy.
4. Engage in self-care.

1. Prioritize Daily Tasks and Eliminate Non-essentials

Organizing your daily priorities can reduce a major source of stress. Creating to-do lists and organizing tasks by priority will help you understand what needs to be done, what can wait, and what can be delegated. It will also show you whether you have too many tasks. If that is the case, be comfortable asking for help.  

2. Build Your Emotional Resilience

When people are busy, they respond by taking on more, not less. This creates burnout because you do not have the opportunity to build your emotional resiliency.

To develop your emotional resiliency, try these ideas:
● Practice relaxation techniques. Your body is not a machine. It won't function well if you don't give it time to rest. Try to meditate or practice deep breathing techniques.
● Be grateful. Start a gratitude journal, and every day, write five things you are thankful for.
● Spend quality time with the people you care about. Build solid relationships to increase the level of support around you.

3. Leverage Your Energy

Remember, time is finite (there are only twenty-four hours in a day), but your energy is not. Are you a morning person or a nighthawk? When you have a full workload, it is advantageous to know when you do your best work, so you can prioritize your schedule to focus on the most demanding tasks when you are at your best. Save your downtime for less demanding duties.

4. Engage in Self-Care

Taking care of your body and mind will enable you to become more stress tolerant. A healthy diet, regular exercise, and solid sleep help mitigate the stress and damage your body deals with daily. Also, set boundaries with others by learning to say no to tasks you can't complete. Schedule quiet time between meetings, and make sure you unplug from your workday, so the lines between work and home are not blurred.

Hike Your Optimism

When you believe that anything is possible, you eliminate barriers to achievement. When you model this behavior, it causes others around you to feel that they can also achieve at a high level. Optimistic people tend to expect good things to happen and anticipate the best outcomes in any situation. They trust that things will turn out well, which helps ward off stress.

Tips and Tools for Increasing Optimism:

1. Set small, realistic goals you can achieve.
2. Accept that failures will happen.
3. Phone a friend and talk through your negative thoughts.
4. Add positive practices to your daily routine.

1. Set Small, Realistic Goals You Can Achieve

To improve your mindset, you must balance realistic and aspirational goals by outlining where you are, where you want to be, and how you plan to get there. When it comes to enhancing optimism, you can dream big, but start small. Taking baby steps toward larger goals is a simple way to boost your confidence as you achieve the goals you set for yourself.

2. Accept That Failures Will Happen

You will mess up. However, how you choose to recover from your missteps can lead to an optimistic outlook. Failing is simply part of learning. So when it happens, don’t stop! Even if you don’t feel optimistic about having failed at something, finding the knowledge contained in the mistake will help boost your feelings of optimism.

3. Phone a Friend and Talk Through Your Negative Thoughts

Share your ups and downs. Lean on a friend when you find yourself ruminating over the same negative thoughts. By sharing them with your friend, you will be able to let them go. Sometimes, simply speaking your negative thoughts out loud can help you hear them for what they truly are, just thoughts and not facts.

4. Add Positivity Practices to Your Daily Routine

Positivity can feel hard to come by when you have low optimism. Similar to taking baby steps toward your goals, find small ways to feel good about yourself, because once you do, seeing gloomy things in a brighter light becomes easier. To challenge your negative, self-limiting beliefs, write out positive affirmations, keep a gratitude journal, or share the positive highlights of your day with family and friends.

Author Bio

Carolyn Stern, the author of The Emotionally Strong Leader, is the President and CEO of EI Experience, an executive leadership development and emotional intelligence training firm. She is a certified Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Development Expert, professional speaker, and university professor whose emotional intelligence courses and modules have been adopted by top universities in North America. She has also provided comprehensive training programs to business leaders across the continent in highly regarded corporations encompassing industries such as technology, finance, manufacturing, advertising, education, healthcare, government, and food service. Visit www:carolynstern.com Connect Carolyn Stern