Increase your ability to handle stress and strong emotions with these quick tips.

1️⃣ Radical acceptance
✔️ Give yourself the right perspective
✔️ When something bad happens, you don’t have to like or condone the situation, but resisting reality only increases suffering and ultimately prevents you from doing the things that make your life better
✔️ Learn to accept the situation with compassion and without criticism, including any part you had in creating the situation
✔️ Memorize and use these 3 sentences to help you get on track when emotions run high

• “I can’t change what’s already happened.”
• “Fighting the past only blinds me to my present.”
• “The present is the only moment I have control over.”

2️⃣ Cue-controlled relaxation
✔️ Make coping with stress a reflex reaction by utilizing your body and mind’s feedback loop. When your brain is too overwhelmed, you can change the body to change what your brain is doing
✔️ Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is the act of tightening muscles followed by relaxing them to decrease stress. Consistent practice of this method will also teach you to notice when you are tight

1. To start, breathe in and clench your fist for 5 seconds, then QUICKLY release/relax your hand as you exhale
2. Spend 15 seconds to notice the difference between both states of contraction and relaxation

• Do this for all major muscle groups 

✔️ Add a Pavlov effect by picking a magic word to say during part 2, so when negative feelings start to build up, you can use the magic word to trigger a change to your body’s state and increase resilience

Find these tips helpful? Follow for Part 2!