Stress Management

INTRODUCTION TO STRESS:

The dictionary definition of stress indulging hardship, strain, physical, emotional or mental pressure.

When pressure becomes greater than resources you will be in stress.

S=P>R.

CAUSES OF STRESS:  

There are different causes some of them are given below.

·      Stress can arise as the result of a number of factors, indulging life events, work and behaviors of others.

·      What you learn from your environment, what we nurture from our families or our surroundings.

·      When recourses go to low according to your needs .

·      The greater the level of responsibility the greater the potential level of stress.

·      Conflict: Stress can arise from work the individual does not want to do or that conflicts with their personal, social and family values.

·      This may arise from boredom because there is not enough to do, or because a job is dull and repetitive.

·      Over thinking.

HEALTH PROBLEM CAUSED BY STRESS:

There are a great number of health problems. Some of them are given below:

·      Depression.

·      Sleep problems.

·      Digestive problems.

·      Heart disease.

·      Weight problem.

·      Thinking and memory problems.

·      Diabetes.

·      Insomnia.

STRESS FEELNGS:

·      Worry.

·      Tense.

·      Tired.

·      Frightened.

·      Depresses.

·      Anger.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF STRESS:

There are a number of common signs and symptoms of stress and stress can also lead to more serious problems and illness .

·      Anxiety.

·      Tension.

·      Seeing only the negative.

·      Feeling overwhelmed.

·      Unreasonable anger.

COST OF STRESS:

 80% of all modern diseases have their origins in stress.

 In the UK, 40 million working days per year are lost directly from stress-related illness.

Cost in absenteeism to British industry is estimated at 1.5 billion pounds per year.

FEW AREAS OF PRESSURE :

·      Finance .

·      Career Progress.

·      Family and Children.

·      Social Relationships.

·      Environmental Stress.

·      Life Phase.

·      Fear.

·     Studies.

Financial stress:

Financial stress can be defined as difficult meeting basic financial commitments due to a shortage of money. Financial stress increases the risk of homelessness and can negatively impact an individual’s health and psychological well-being. Not to surprising, low income is a significant  cause of financial stress.

Now there is a question that how do overcome financial stress? My belief is that “ if there is problem, Our Creator give big solution than our problem if we try to find that and learn”.

Here are some suggestions for how to help reduce your money stress and get motivated to take control of your finances:

Identify What Needs The Most Attention:

Write your three biggest money challenges so you know what you are up against. Whether its’s making your monthly bill payment, fesses, or saving for retirement, it’s important to focus on the main sources of your financial anxiety. (Keeping the list short can help you feel less overwhelmed.)

Manage Your Expanses:

Manage your expanses means plan your expanses, you should know to spend your money where are you going to spend and is it important and valuable.

The second one to manage and plan your money you should know about you needs and wants, what you want can be compromises but what you need didn’t. So, that is a great solution for our finances less than you Earn.

Diversification Is Not Just for Investments:

Find creative ways to diversify your income. Everyone has a talent or special skill. “ Turn your talents into a money-making opportunity. Investigate ways to  make money from home and launch a home-based business,” Morris says. The extra income can supplement your full-time income or even result in an exciting career change. Good financial management software can show you how even a slight improvement in income can positively change your financial profile.

Charity: The belief that wealth comes from Allah and is therefore given to us in trust helps to promote a culture of charity. Aside from encouragement to give voluntary charity, one of the five pillars of Islam are a mandatory charity called zakat. We belief that if we help others Allah will give us more.

Allah said in Quran:

“Indeed, the men who practice charity and the woman who practice charity and (they who) have loaned Allah a goodly loan – it will be multiplied for them, and they will have a noble reward.”

Fear: The feeling of being stressed can be triggered by an event that makes you triggered by an event that makes you feel frustrated   or nervous.

Anxiety is  a feeling of fear, worry or unease. It can be a reaction to    stress , or it can occur in people who are unable to identify significant stressors in their life. Stress and anxiety are not always bad.

Tips to Work Through Your Fear & Live Your Life:

1: Allow yourself to sit with your fear for 2-3 minutes at a time. Breathe with it and say, “It’s okay.”

2: Write down the things you are grateful for. ( Adopt the mind set of gratitude)

3: Use humor to deflate your worst fears.

4: Don’t share your fear with others and don’t tell your personals with everyone.

5: Always you share your problems with your family, special with your

mother and father, if you think they didn’t accept and insult you; that situation is for short time.

6: Be sport for yourself, be stronger and think and of your fear. Mostly, fear comes when we don’t want to

·      Be aware of fear in your life.

·     Stare at fearless people. Fill your brain with images of what you want your ‘future self’ to look like.

7: Be willing to look stupid. You never think any time “ what people think about you” . who are these people, are these  so important that you ruin your life for them?

8: Be objective. Go for your goal and achieve success.

Ask HIM. HE Listens: Du’a:

Turn each anxiety, each fear and each concern into a Du’a( supplication). Look as it as another reason to submit to God and be in Sajdah( prostration), during which you are closest to Allah. God listens and already knows what is in your heart, but He wants you to ask Him for what you want.

“ Call on your Lord with humility and in private: for Allah loveth not those who trespass beyond bounds. Do not make mischief on the earth, after it hath been set in order, but call on Him with fear. And longing(in your hearts): for the mercy of Allah is (always) near to those who do good” ( QURAN 7:55-56)

TIE YOUR CAMEL: Do Your Part:

One day Prophet Muhammad(peace and blessing be upon Him), noticed a Bedouin leaving his camel without tying it. He asked the Bedouin, “why don’t you tie down your camel?” the Bedouin answered, “ I put my trust in Allah.” The Prophet then said, “ Tie your camel first, then put your trust in Allah”(Tirmidhi).

Turn each worry into a Du’a and each Du’a into action plan. That will show your commitment to your request and will focus your energy in the right direction.

“Verily Allah dose not change men’s condition unless they change their inner selves”(Quran 13:11).

Seek Help Through Sabr:

Seek help through sabr and salat (Quran 2:45).

This instruction from Allah provides us with two critical tools that can ease our worries and pain. Patience and prayer are two oft-neglected stressbusters. Sabr is often translated as Patience  but it is not just that, it includes self-control, perseverance, endurance, and a focused struggle to achieve one’s goal. Unlike patience, which implies resignation, the concept of sabr includes duty to remain steadfast to achieve your goals despite all odd

Study:

Causes of stress:

o  Examination

o  Poor of Time Management

o  Leaving assignments to the last minute

o  Out of control debts

o  Difficulty in organizing work

o  Poor sleep schedule

 Strategies That Can I Use To Manage Stress Levels:

To manage stress, you first need to identify its causes. Remember that not  everyone gets stressed by the same things or events. You probably have your own combination of stressors based on your experiences, your brain’s pre-programmed response patterns and the environment you’re in when the stressors strike. Take a few moments to think about the activities or circumstances that stress you out or overwhelm you. For example, are you stressed:

o  When you have to speak in front of the class?

o  When you’re studying or reviewing for exam?

o  When you’re writing examination or attending an interview?

o  While you work in group or with a team?

For many students, exam periods represent the ultimate in stress. If that’s true for you, below are some tips to help overcome test-time anxiety.

If you get stressed while revising course material:

o  Create a calm, well-lit and comfortable workplace. This can eliminating certain distraction, re-arranging workspace so its cleaner or more organized, placing a picture of family nearby your glance at, etc.

o  Take a break from the subject studying. For example, go for a walk or a run, call a friend or relative, recite Quran, review other subjects that you find easier or more enjoyable, take a series of deep breath.

o  Perform relaxation exercises or get a message.

If you stress out during exam:

o  Take  minute or two to repeat positive and confident thoughts in your head. Try making another perspective, such as “it’s only  an exam.”

o  Think of something pleasant ( a favorite childhood memory, a vacation you hope to take some day, a family member or friend who always supported you no matter what, your dog or cat, a good joke you have heard or read, etc.

o  Take a deep breath.

Some Other Solution:

Sometimes we create our own stress like; we miss our assignment, tasks , and the other stuff.

So, we should manage our all tasks before time, for that; time management will help us.

And sometimes our thoughts  become reason for our stress, So that we should be care about our thoughts. Don’t be think too much about anything.

If you have something to share, do share sometimes it release through sharing.

And seek help from Allah, through salat and sabr if you don’t have someone to share or you don’t want to share you should share with your Creator.

Relationship Management:

Your relationship conflicts truly take a toll on your physical health and effects your emotional well-being as well. This can be tough pchychologically. It can leave you feeling frazzled, overwhelmed, and less confident in handling other stress you face in life. It is in your best interest to reevaluate your relationships, identify the taxing ones, and minimize or even eliminate these negative relationships in your life.

AVOIDING AND MANAGING STRESS:

It is important to learn to recognize your stress triggers and find effective ways to manage your stress to avoid it negatively affecting your life or even making you unwell.

·      One of the most stressful issue of all is a sense that you are losing control , it is ,therefore, important to take control of your stress level and put in place at active system management.

·      Nutrition and Diet : A good diet can help you to manage stress better .

·      Work place stress: Avoiding burnout, improve your satisfaction, and bolster your well-being in and out of work place.

·      Time management: Manage yourself to manage your time, your tasks, your relations, and make some smart goal to feel success after achieving them .

·      Friendly social network: A strong network of supportive friends and family members is a brilliant way against stress.

·      Sleeping Habit: Improve your sleep so you feel less stressed and more productive and emotionally balanced.

·      Relaxation techniques: Yoga, meditation, and deep breathing activate the body’s relaxation response, a state of restfulness that is polar opposite of stress response.

·      Self-limitation: Set limits appropriately and say no to requests that would create excessive stress in your life.

·      Exercise : Your body can fight stress better when it is fit.

·      Meditation: Meditation is considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine. Meditation can produce a deep state of relaxation .It give you a sense of calm, and peace .

·      Change life patterns: It helps you to change mind Patterns.

·      Communication: Ask all the things that irritates you to someone who close to you.

·      Connect with nature: See the sun during setting and arising. Feel fresh air.

·      Make good habit: Helping others increasing your positive attitude.

·      Believe in who create you: Don’t think about things too much, WHO creates you HE has better plan for you.

HOW HIGHLY SUCESSFUL PEOPLE MANAGE STRESS:

·      Bill Gates like to read before bed.

·      Apple CEO Tim Cook advised students, “to stay positive and tune out a lot of the noise you’ll come to against in life” . Listing to everyone all the time is incredibly stressful.

·      Sheryl Sandberg  tries to stop herself scrolling through social media or reading emails at night, she turns off her phone at night.

·      Meg Whitman goes fly-fishing , she and her son go to fishing for  about six times every year.

·      Jack Dorsey sticks to a schedule, he said, “I think generally stress comes from things that are unexpected”.

·      Susan Wojcik makes  time for his family holidays, she said, “ I think its really important to take time off”.

HOW DOES ISLAM GUIDES ABOUT MANAGING STRESS?

“QURANIC REFLECTION ON STRESS FACTORS”

1.   Be sure We will test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss of goods or lives, but give glad tidings to those who are steadfast, who say when afflicted  with calamity: To Allah we belong  and to Him is our return . They are those on whom blessing from Allah and mercy and they are ones that receive guidance (Quran 2:155)

Whatever we have gift from Allah. Everything belongs to Him and returns to Him. We are not owners of those. So, if we do not own these things why we mourn their loss or wax proud on receiving then.

2.   In their hearts there is a disease and God has increased their disease and grievous is their penalty because they lie to themselves.(Quran 2:10)

When a man lies to himself, he creates an inner conflict between his heart and his mind. In order to contain that conflict, the mind sends signals to glands for secretion of hormones like adrenalin which leads to rapid heart rate, perspiration, tremor, the basic of a lie detector test.

INCREASE DHIKR (REMEMBERANCE OF GOD)

“He guides to Himself those who turn to Him in penitence . Those who have believed and whose heart heave rest in the remembrance of Allah. Verify in  the remembrance of Allah, do hearts find rest”.(Quran 13:27-28)

“O mankind! There has come to you a direction from you Lord, and healing for (the disease in your) heart, and for those who believe a guidance, and mercy”.(Quran 10:57)

Dr. Ahmed El Kadi of Akbar Clinic, at Panama City, Florida, conducted and has published the effects of listening to Quranic recitation on physiological parameters i.e. the heart rate, the blood pressure and the muscle tension and reports improvement in all, irrespective of whether the listener is a Muslim or a non-Muslim, Arabs or non-Arabs.

PROPHET MUHAMMAD’S (S.A.W.W) PRAYER DURING STRESS:

The Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.W) himself used and advised his followers to use the following prayers in the time of distress.

·     “Allah is sufficient for us, and He is an excellent guardian, and we repose our trust in Allah”.

·     “Surely, we belong to Allah and to Him shell we return. O Allah, I beseech you for the reward of my hardship”.

·     “Rewarded me, and compensate me for it with something good”.