Week 3 Stress management update.

Week 3 has passed and I have to say it has been an a chaotic week with assignment deadlines creeping up. I notice my stress levels has been a roller coaster of personal pressure and frustration to completing assessment task on time. So it was a perfect week to really utilise these stress management strategies to reduce my stress levels.

This week decided to revisit stress managing techniques that I have reviewed in the past two weeks which were exercise, meditation and music.

Exercise

I decided to start of the week by doing some kind of physical activity from Sunday (14/5/2017) to Tuesday (16/5/2017). Pressure from trying to complete my parts for a group assignment initiated my rise in stress levels in those 3 days. How I allowed this trigger is to change an article that was required for the group assignment last minute. My as stress level rose my ability to complete the task I needed to do began to suffer. I would scale my stress levels to be 8/10. From then on I decided to go outside for a walk around my block. Walking in the fresh air, seeing how active my neighbourhood is and also seeing nature helped me to reduce my stress within the first 5 minutes of my walk. 15 minutes later I reach home and felt very much at peace. My stress levels reduced to a 2/10. As soon as I resumed my work I had a much clearer thought process than before. 

Meditation

For the next 2 days, Wednesday (17/5/2017) to Thursday (17/5/2017) I decided to revisit meditation. Stress continued linger over me in my personal life. I was worried about certain events that are happening in my life right now such as a potential volunteer opportunity and having hopes of getting in. In times like this as I experienced mid week I decided to take 10 minutes (using the stop watch on my phone to time it) to meditate. Within the first 2 minutes of my meditation I found it challenging to keep a quiet mind. However, once the 3rd minute passed I noticed how much calmer I feel both mentally and physically. I felt very soothed. Loose from all the thoughts I had prior to startng. My stress level went from 6/10 down to a 2/10.
I did revisit this particular meditation music video I had found on youtube. . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc6VqCdOqpY

Music

Finally the last two days of this week I decided to revisit music again as a stress relief tool. from Friday(19/5/2017) to Saturday(20/5/2017. With my individual assignment due very soon yet again I found myself returning to that horrible head space. I felt like I was thinking 1000 miles a minute. I found it very hard to concentrate. Due to this I decided to listen to some Indian classical music my stress level were rather high, listening to the Indian classical music has helped sooth me. My stress level dropped from 8/10 to 3/10. My mind became much more peaceful compared to how I was prior to using the music to reduce my stress level.