How to Deal with Stress – Use Gratitude

When balancing work and family life, it’s normal to have the occasional bad day, or maybe it’s dayssssss. Unfortunately, during stressful times in life, those difficult days can string together and have a more long term impact on our health and relationships. Stress can cause irritability and shortness of temper, even when speaking with your family and other people you love. Meaning, it really isn’t them, it’s you! Stress can also cause headaches, fatigue, chest pain, muscle tension, and other physical and mental issues. In a few words, stress sucks, and as an entrepreneur there’s no shortage of stressful moments and figuring out how to deal with stress is very important to your health.

One way to counteract a stressful week, whether it was rough at work or challenging with the kids, is by using gratitude. Research shows a connection between gratitude and well-being, and an active gratitude practice can cultivate positive feelings, enhance empathy, and improve self-esteem. Here are a couple ways to practice gratitude on your own and with your family and use that grateful attitude to deal with stress.

Keep a Journal

Make it a priority to take five minutes every day to write down everything for which you feel grateful. If that’s too much just start with a list of 3 of your top things that went really well. You can focus on good things that happened that day, like good weather or a fun lunch at work, or you can write about things you feel grateful for every day: your family, your job, your house, your health, and so on. That’s the trick – is letting the “so on” become a reminder of everything that’s going right in your life and not sweating the small stuff.

Family Gratitude Meeting

Get together with your spouse and children before bed or at the dinner table and talk about the best parts of the day. Ask everyone to share what they were grateful for that day. It’s human nature to focus on the negative, in fact there are studies about the ‘negativity bias.’ The trick is that successful people focus more on what’s going right than they do focusing on what isn’t.

Look Around

When that difficult email arrives to your inbox, or your child throws a tantrum, before you get frustrated, look around and notice every little thing you find pleasing. Say “thank you” to each one: Thank you, normally well-behaved child; thank you, clients who need me, and so forth.

Let yourself go non-stop for as long as you can, or set a timer so you keep at it for five minutes. It doesn’t matter how silly it is. Get rolling and notice how easy it is to find things to appreciate. If you’re feeling really stuck here, take yourself outside and notice the sun shining, the birds chirping, children’s laughter (don’t stress about the subsequent mischief) and really hone in on all of the little things that combine to make a wonderful life.

Say Thank You… and Mean It

Sometimes, we throw around the words “thank you” because we know it’s what we’re supposed to say when someone serves our lunch or drops off a report. It might be an automated response in your vocabulary without much feeling or emotion attached to it. Every time you get an opportunity to thank someone for what they’ve done for you, pause long enough to feel the gratitude, look the person in the eye, and say, “Thank you.” They’ll definitely notice the difference and the cycle of gratitude continues.

I’d love to hear from you and what you do to practice gratitude in your life!