Coping strategies for dealing with stress

Stress is part of everyone’s life at some stage or another. I think of dealing with it in three different ways: avoiding it if feasible; reducing it where possible; and finding better, more elegant ways of coping with it.

If you don’t know your favourite and most effective ways of dealing with stress before it happens, you’ll find it difficult to come up with them at short notice; that’s why it’s important to have them prepared in advance. Different situations will call for different responses, so we need to have flexible solutions. Here are some strategies that I find useful:

- Exercising and clean eating
- Avoiding caffeine
- Maintaining strong physiological positions
- Taking slow deep breaths
- Journaling about experiences
- Meeting with friends and family for meals
- Changing the rules for feeling stress (more about this in a later post)
- Trying to come up with creative solutions to fix the problem(s)
- Venting about feelings to a trusted friend/family member
- Asking for help from a colleague or family member
- Dancing, singing and playing music  
- Speaking slowly and calmly

What have I left out? What would you add to this list?