By: Kurt Rawlins, fitness professional, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and author.

You wake up at 5 o’clock to shower and rush off to work. You skip breakfast, but manage to drink 4-5 cups of coffee throughout the morning to keep you going. You’re stressed about preparing for your 8 o’clock meeting. You’re mind was racing all night, disrupting your sleep. You have a lot to do today, so you scarf down lunch in 5 minutes and head back to your desk. Your boss is down your throat for not meeting deadlines and expectations. You stay an hour late until 5 and manage to take your kids to soccer or volleyball practice. You come home, exhausted, and realize the fridge is empty. You order take out, and continue to work on a few things you couldn’t finish from work. After all, you have a big presentation tomorrow. Before you know it, it’s 11 p.m., and you’re not quite finished, but you need to wind down. You watch an hour of T.V. and finally pass out around midnight, only to repeat the cycle the next day.

Does this sound like you? Too many people have days like this, and they’re incredibly stressful. Over time, these daily stresses add up and throw off your body’s systems, interrupting digestion and creating hormonal balances. In the worst cases, stress can lead to disease, cancer, and death.

Here are ten simple strategies to manage stress that everybody could use in their life:

1. Sleep in until 9:00 a.m. whenever possible, including weekends.

2. Stay away from artificial light 30 minutes before bed. Your body doesn’t distinguish between natural and artificial light. In response to light, your body will release cortisol, a stress hormone. Cortisol will prepare your body for action, and can inhibit sleep patterns.

3. Drink tea, read, or take a hot shower or bath before bed. This promotes a decrease in cortisol levels and will help the body to release melatonin and growth and repair hormones, enhancing the natural sleep cycle.

4. Exercise. This could be resistance training, cardio, stretching, yoga. Whatever you enjoy, do it, and do it often. You’ll increase your energy levels and sleep better.

5. Avoid coffee and caffeine, at least after early morning. You’ll drain your adrenal glands and drag through the day.

6. Eat frequent, small meals. Instead of drinking coffee, have a light snack like fruit or a baggy of fresh vegetables.This will maintain your metabolism and you won’t crash.

7. Relax. Use belly-breathing, slow-breathing, or count your exhalations. Even ten minutes of this will promote stress relief. Make it routine.

8. Reframe. Picture an intimidating person in a diaper instead of a suit. Distort his face in your mind.Make his nose big and his eyes bulging.

9. Laugh everyday. Surround yourself with people who are lighthearted and don’t take life too seriously. Laughter truly does have great health effects.

10. Take horizontal power naps. You’d be amazed at what 15-30 minutes can do as far as restoring your body.

Further Reading
Kurt Rawlins is a fitness professional, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and author. He specializes in helping professional women in Chicago shape and tone their muscles into fat-burning machines so they can wear whatever they want, and feel healthy and confident doing it. Visit his website at http://www.kurtrawlinsfitness.com to sign up for his free e-newsletter with valuable fitness and nutrition tips.
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