Stress has become a widespread phenomenon nowadays. It is not only affecting the productivity of people at work, but is also causing significant health problems. People who are battling stress, search for ways to combat it and stop it from hampering their productivity at work and interfering with their personal lives. One such method is via affirmations. One of the favorite approaches of all the psychologists and therapists, positive affirmations, help a person to focus on the good and let the negative things like ‘stress’ pass.
Managing stress is very important because, in many cases, stress is the sole reason for health deterioration.
According to studies, positive affirmations help activate the brain’s reward centre, and that, in turn, makes us happy and positive about things – helping us avoid the stressors around us.
There are many ways to manage stress, like yoga, meditation, indulging in hobbies, going for a walk etc. One of the very effective ways to manage stress is affirmations. Not many people know what affirmations exactly are and how they help with dealing with anxiety, but the concept of affirmations is becoming more known to people.
What are affirmations?
In general, an affirmation is a sentence of positive and powerful words put together to form an encouraging statement which taps into the conscious and subconscious mind to motivate, encourage and challenge you to reach your full potential.
Affirmations are motivational and positive self-talk with yourself that can help you alter your perspective and subconscious thoughts. When you repeat encouraging, supportive and positive statements daily to yourself, it gives you power because when you start listening to something every day, you start believing it. Your belief, then, in turn, impacts your actions making your affirmations become a reality.
How to practice affirmations to reduce stress?
There are a lot of ways to practice affirmations. You can write your claims in a diary daily and read them first thing in the morning. Or you can stand in front of a mirror and say the affirmations to yourself.
It has been proven that affirmations help in combating stress to a significant extent and help in regaining lost confidence. Affirmations are thus gaining importance as an effective stress removal technique because not only is it easy, but it has reduced stress in many individuals and made them more positive and confident.
Where do you store stress in your body?
Often, we cannot understand that we are going through stress. An effortless way to identify stress is to understand changes you may observe in your body. Different people store tension in other parts of their bodies. Listed below are the body parts with the type of stress they indicate.
Lower back: Negative emotions and stress like anger is often found in the lower back of our bodies. This is where we feel heavy when angry at something or someone.
Neck problems: Have you been feeling issues in your neck lately? Well, that might mean that you are depicting stubbornness or are unable to see the other side of the equation.
Stomach and intestines problems: When we experience stress like anxiety in our lives, and we are unable to assimilate new experiences, we tend to feel issues in the digestive system.
Headache: When you lose control over things, your head starts getting heavier.
Neck and shoulder tension: With many burdens and responsibilities, comes stress in the neck and shoulder.
Hair problems: You might experience hair fall or hair-related issues if you lack strength or are experiencing tension.
Numbness: Numbness is a sign of experiencing trauma.
Breathing difficulties: With anxiety, we start feeling difficulty breathing.
Back problems: With a lack of support, people often have back-related issues in their bodies. That’s when you identify your stress.
Insomnia: When you start losing yourself and become restless, you start losing sleep too.
Heart and chest: When we are hurt by something or someone, we start experiencing pains/heaviness in our chest area.
Throat problems: Feeling inadequate to stand for yourself, repressed anger, and swallowing emotional hurt all cause issues in the throat. That is how you know that you have been feeling stressed.
Eye problems: If you’re not accepting or not, feeling good about what you see in your life; not wanting to know the past, present or future; or not seeing or getting the truth, you might have some eye-related problems.