Stress Management – The Four ‘A’s

Cortisol, released in response to stress. It also suppresses the immune system.

I recently came across some great techniques in stress management that made me stop and think.

Let’s face it, some things in our lives that are stressful to us we can change, and some things we can’t.

The things that we can’t change sometimes grate on us and wear us down. I know that I, like everyone else, have various situations or awkward people that stress me out but I’m unable to alter the situation or the person’s approach. Then, I stumbled across an interesting way to deal with stress beyond our control.

The stress management technique for dealing with things out of our control that grabbed my attention was the ‘four As’ technique and here it is:

* Avoid – Alter -Accept – Adapt

Avoid

So, if you don’t need the stress that’s taking place in your life, can you avoid it? Let’s say reading about crime in the newspaper is stressing you out, you may ask yourself “Do I really need to read about every crime?”

Alter

Let’s suppose that you can’t avoid the stressful situation. Perhaps someone is stressing you out at work because they are being constantly negative. Perhaps you can steer the conversation around to more positive subjects.

Accept

Sometimes the only way to be at peace with incoming stress is to just accept it if you really can’t change anything. If you have a medical condition that’s unavoidable for instance, it may be time to just sit down and spend some time accepting the situation.

Adapt

If you accept something, that doesn’t mean you can’t adapt to the situation. If you have noisy neighbours for instance you can wear earplugs, listen to music with headphones or sound proof your bedroom.

Do you know of any other good stress management techniques for survival in a sometimes manic world? If you have any interesting stress management tips, please post them below.