Do you ever walk into work and feel overwhelmed before you even get started? Feeling like you’ll never be “caught up?” Do you get home in the evenings still tense and find yourself snapping at everyone? What if the first step to lowering your stress isn’t doing more, but simply noticing more? If we want to lower our stress levels it doesn’t begin by working harder or longer hours. It begins with self-awareness.
Understanding WHY we do what we do, why certain situations or conversations spike our stress, and using this knowledge to make changes. Knowledge alone doesn’t change our behavior. Learning information about ourselves, (our strengths, our personality, etc,) moves to self-awareness when we notice our reactions, emotions, energy shifts, and begin using that information to react differently.
Why Self-Awareness Lowers Stress
- Helps you catch thoughts early before they spiral into stress.
- Reveals your patterns (where you overcommit, what drains you, what restores you.)
- Helps you learn to pause and respond instead of react from fear.
Self-Awareness = Noticing
- What if you started noticing how you always feels tense before certain meetings? Noticing this gives you a change to prepare differently.
- How does your body feel when you skip lunch? This shows you just how important the basic rhythms and not taking care of our physical health can affect our stress levels.
- Notice your self-talk. Is it harsh or frustrated? How would shifting that inner dialogue to give yourself more grace and support change your stress levels?
Simple Practices to Build Self-Awareness
- Before you react, pause and breathe.
- Reflect or journal daily about what situations or conversations caused you stress and what helped you feel calm. Check out my Examine Your Day prompts if you need somewhere to start.
- Take a few moments to do a body scan noticing where you feel the stress in your body.
- Use tools like the Enneagram and Working Genius as maps to help you identify WHY certain things cause you more stress.
Awareness is step one in lowering our stress. Life will always have stress, but when we move from the knowledge that something is causing us stress to understanding why, we empower ourselves to live with more clarity and calm.
What is one small awareness practice you can start this week? Download my free 7 Mindful Micro-Breaks here for a Less Stressful Workday for easy ways you can incorporate more mindfulness in your day.