Stress is probably the most common problem in modern life. And yet, how to deal with stress is well-known and easily achieved. You avoid stress by getting enough sleep, keeping your attitude positive, and working towards your long-term goals.
The question of course, is how to achieve those three things? It has been proven over and over that the answer is exercise. Regular consistent exercise is possibly the single most important thing in keeping your mind and body healthy.
Benefits of enough exercise
Exercise does not only benefit the body. It also has a direct effect on the mind. Regular exercise lift your mood, and leaves you feeling relaxed and calm afterwards. When you feel relaxed and calm, you are better able to deal with stressors as they arrive.
A healthy body actually leads to a healthy mind. Exercise releases any emotional tensions held in your muscles. Releasing muscular tension releases anxiety. Relaxed muscles help you sleep better. Relaxed muscles prevent you generating the hormones associated with stress. Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenalin and other hormones all affect our perceptions of stress.
Those hormones enter the bloodstream, are taken to the brain, and make you feel worse. They maintain the primitive fight or flight responses in your brain, and keep you keyed up, ready to take on any threat. Constant anxiety tends to fill your mind with negative thoughts. These feed on themselves, make you more anxious, because more stress hormones, which then makes you feel even worse.
The way out of this vicious cycle is to get regular strenuous exercise. Exercise creates a different set of hormones that tend to make you feel good. Feeling good, makes you think positive thoughts. Positive thoughts lead to positive attitudes. And your positive attitude makes you immune to the things that normally trigger stress in you.
Most people just do not get enough exercise.
Do you?
As well as telling your clients how to improve their mental balance, perhaps you should be prescribing a healthy dose for yourself as well?