How to Stress Less: What is Stress and How to Get Rid of it

While many of us would probably agree that having less stress in our lives would be more than nice, the truth is that we can make life a lot better in many ways by doing simple things to reduce stress.

Studies on stress have shown that it can cause major health problems, and that is pretty common knowledge. But did you know that it can also severely damage your finances? When you have stress in any area of your life it can affect your money situation. Here are a few examples:

• Stress in Relationships: You are constantly fighting with your spouse and end up spending a fortune on therapists, vacations, dinners out, etc.

• Stress at Work: You are feeling pressure at work and don’t feel like being there, which causes your performance to decline and you get passed over for a promotion.

• Stress in your Spiritual Life: You are feeling conflicted in what you believe about the purpose of life and why you believe what you do, and because of this you quit your job and launch headlong into a volunteer position helping others (while helping others is by no means a bad thing, you have lost all your income and are unable to support yourself).

• Stress in your Personal Life: You feel self-conscious about how you look and buy a gym membership, new workout clothes, weights, workout videos and equipment and use them at first but after a while don’t use them anymore.

• Stress in your Finances: You are getting bills every day with past due balances and ever-increasing interest rates. You wonder where you will get the money to pay these bills and end up opening new credit cards to shuffle the balances around, ultimately digging yourself into a deeper hole.

Each of these situations involve a different area of your life where stress can occur and hurt your financial situation. At iMoneyCoach our goal is to not only help people find financial freedom, but we also want to get people to a place where they can truly and enthusiastically say “I LOVE my life!” And the way we do that is by helping people find ways to eliminate stress in order to find balance across all the areas of their life.

At iMoneyCoach we actually think of stress in terms of something that is not done or is undone. When you have this incomplete thing on your plate, you feel stress. Relating to the examples above, the incomplete thing in the relationship may be communication, or in the personal life it may be physical fitness. Whatever the situation, that nagging feeling from the undone thing causes stress.

Here are a couple of ways you can stress less and find greater happiness as you walk the road to financial freedom:

1. Set Goals – I know, many people cringe at the idea of setting goals. But if you set small, manageable goals in each area of your life you will find you are able to accomplish the things you want to do and gain balance in your life that reduces your stress. You can learn more about this idea in our Goal-Setting article.

2. Prioritize - Make a list of those things you need to do or areas where you are feeling stress. Then determine which of those areas are most important to fix and whether there are some that you can eliminate (i.e. do you really need to go to Starbucks every day to unwind or is that causing stress because you have to work more to pay for all those stops?).

3. Set aside time to accomplish things for each of your life areas – Adjust your schedule so that you make a point to work on your goals for each of your life areas. Treat that time with respect and don’t neglect it. You will find that making sure you work a little each day to reach your goals and find balance will help you feel much better.

4. Budget, budget, budget - I can’t put enough emphasis on the importance of budgeting, obviously to your finances, but also to the rest of your life. If you know exactly how much money is coming in and going out, you will feel much less stressed. It will give you a sense of control over your finances and help you make changes in your life that will give you peace.

5. Give - Whether you give of your time, your money, your talents and skills, or your heart, giving can help you feel much less stressed. When you focus on the needs and hurts of others, you will often find that your stresses don’t seem so bad after all.

We hope these tips help you to stress less and enjoy your day. If you feel the pressures of your finances rising and want another great idea to decrease your stress, be sure to get the iMoneyCoach Financial Life Training System, a series of 10 online finance courses that will help you reach financial freedom. It will teach you things from how to create and adjust a budget to how to determine your spending personality and change your spending habits accordingly, how to find life balance, how to set and achieve your goals, how to dream big and create your financial vision, and how to leave a legacy for your loved ones.

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