As a health and fitness professional, you may experience heightened stress as a result of your client interactions. Though you are highly empathic, you may feel as if you are taking on your clients’ difficulties and even their specific pressures.
As you may think, this does not augur well for your personal stress management. You may also be dealing with a variety of stresses, such as time spent in traffic, lengthy workdays that begin early and end late, attempting to squeeze in your own exercises between clients, a lack of sleep, and the pressure to generate material for your customers, all of which may quickly overwhelm you.
Therefore, what can you do to assist in coping with all of this stress? Beginning today, try these three simple actions to reduce your stress and increase your productivity.
1. Organize Your Energy to Maintain Concentration
One reason you may feel overwhelmed is that you are stretched too thin, with numerous clients, projects, and locations vying for your attention at the same time. With your attention divided between too many activities, it might be difficult to maintain concentrate on a single job for an extended period of time.
You may feel overwhelmed as a result of completing things when you are not at your most productive or energetic. Consider your energy levels throughout the day: Are you more energized in the morning, midday, or evening? Are you psychologically better prepared to accomplish particular activities at one period of the day than another? Consider the time of day when you have the greatest energy for specific chores and then plan those tasks throughout that hour.
2. Schedule Your Time to Avoid Distractions, Reduce Stress and Increase Achievement
Distractions abound alerts on cell phones, phone calls, emails, texts, and social media pings, to name a few. Each signal that diverts your attention needs additional minutes to refocus on the task at hand. This can build up to a significant amount of time missed during the day. A simple method to do this is to disable all alerts on your mobile phone and computer, which allows you to focus entirely on the work at hand, uninterrupted.
Consider allocating specific time intervals throughout your day to various tasks. For instance, if you are most creative in the morning (see step 1, above), devote the first hour of your day to producing content for your clients, deferring email responses until later in the day. Consider taking it a step further and adding time blocks to your digital or paper calendar, and adhering to your plan every day for maximum effect.
If you want to be more conscientious about your time management, use the Pomodoro technique: set a timer for 25 minutes and work for 25 minutes followed by a 5-minute break. With just 25 minutes to devote to a job, you are obliged to focus entirely on that activity. If 25 minutes is insufficient time, increase it to 45 minutes; utilize whatever duration works best for you and your level of attention and needs.
3. Discover Pleasurable Ways to Unwind
When your stress level is high and you feel overwhelmed, engage in an activity that assists you in overcoming your tension and clearing your thoughts. The trick is to discover something you love doing; for example, avoid practicing yoga just because everyone else is doing it to alleviate stress, even if you dislike it. Rather than that, choose something you like and will look forward to doing when stress levels are high.
Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
- Take a stroll
- Go for a run or engage in some other physical activity.
- Doodling, drawing, coloring, or painting
- Read Perform a musical instrument
- Take in music
- Write about your tension and a simple solution to anything that may be a significant source of stress for you.
- Take a brief break with a friend.
- Meditate
- Take three to five deep breaths (or more) while concentrating on breathing into your belly button and allowing it to rise and fall in time with your breath.
The key to Reduce Stress and Increase Achievement is to discover what works best for you in terms of managing your energy, time, and current stress levels, so have fun exploring these suggestions.