How to Achieve Emotional Freedom
What does it mean to have emotional freedom? To have emotional freedom means not being a slave to your own emotions. All too often people become a slave to their emotions by poorly managing stressful situations. Poor stress management can lead to irritability, feelings of being overwhelmed, insomnia, aches, pains, and tense muscles. Stress can also cause constant worrying, forgetfulness, disorganization, an inability to focus, poor judgment and only seeing the negative side of situations. Stress can also lead to procrastination and avoiding responsibilities. The most serious effects of long-term stress include mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Long term stress can also cause health problems and sexual dysfunction. Living like this day to day takes mental and emotional resources from what is truly important. Emotional and mental resources should be directed towards creating meaningful work and personal relationships as well as advancing your professional career.
How Stress Affects Work
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, higher levels of stress are associated with lower productivity. Many working professionals are in stressful employment situations. Sometimes people are unwilling or cannot leave the stressful situation that they are in. The only option is stress management. Two people can be in the same stressful situation but how they handle it can produce different outcomes. Let’s just say person A and person B are in the same stressful workplace. Person A decides to overthink, become irritable and becomes a negative person. Person B decides to maintain healthy habits like positive thinking and avoids the downward spiral of negative thoughts. Person B maintains a healthy lifestyle with exercise, positive affirmations, healthy eating, stress relieving massages and yoga. Over time Person B builds resilience in managing the stressful situation at work. Person B understands that selfcare which includes taking time to relax and relieve stress is necessary for their resilience. Person B maintains good productivity at work since Person B is not being brought down by stress. Person A has a different outcome. Person A begins to get aches and pains. Person A’s productivity goes down. This becomes a vicious cycle because lower productivity creates missed deadlines which creates more stress. Person A finds themselves in a downward spiral of negativity and stress.
Stress and Communication Break Down
A person’s stress level becomes visible through the way they communicate. When emotions run high, a person can have a difficult time choosing the correct words or tone. This is according to behavioral health systems, “The Relationship Between Stress and Communication”. Alternatively, when a person feels stressed, they might decide to withdraw from communication and become more reclusive. This withdrawal from friends and family can create a barrier between the person and the help and support they might need. This is according to the same article mentioned above.
How Stress Affects Relationships
Stress has adverse effects on personal and work relationships. Stress can lead to needless negativity when interacting with coworkers. Stress can damage working relationships as it is difficult to work with a pessimistic person. Unmanaged stress can cause conflict at work and at home. Stress can also damage personal relationships as no one wants to be around a negative person. Unmanaged stress makes it even harder to manage life’s challenges. When people are stressed, they become more withdrawn, distracted and less affectionate. This is according to Psychology Today’s article “Is Stress Killing Your Relationship? Why You’re Not Alone”. Furthermore, according to the article above, “stress depletes people, sapping their cognitive resources. It also increases vigilance. This means when you are stressed you are more likely to notice negative behaviors and less able to stop yourself from reacting badly to them. It also means that you are less patient and less able to give your partner the benefit of the doubt when they behave badly. Stress also makes people more irritable and hostile, which increases the likelihood of fighting. When fighting, stress may make people less able to listen or show interest and empathy. In short, stress turns nonissues into issues and prevents your ability to deal with the issue constructively.”
Emotional and Mental Resources
Emotional and mental resources should not be directed towards constant worrying, overthinking and negative thinking. This is no way to live. Achieving emotional health and emotional freedom includes a lifestyle change. This lifestyle change could include healthy eating, exercise, positive affirmations, yoga, and stress relieving massages. All these healthy lifestyle changes can contribute to emotional health and emotional freedom. This means less rumination, overthinking and negative thinking. This means healthier relationships without needless negativity which stems from stress. This also means increased professional performance and career advancement.
Finding Emotional Freedom
Free yourself from negative emotions, add stress relieving massages to your healthy lifestyle. Protect your personal and work relationships from negativity.
