Stress and coping

Stress and Coping With It Almost all of us have undergone stress at one point in our lives or another. Stress management is a very important topic if we need wish to lead our life in peace and make the most out of it. There are many stress management techniques which can be followed to relieve a person of the stress he undergoes. While some techniques are quiet difficult and others fairly easy, all have different results (Bickerstaff, 2007).
The stress management technique that I chose as a part of this project was swimming. I have always loved swimming and my inclination towards this sport started from the time I was a young teen and my mom used to take me to swimming lessons. Contrary to the popular belief swimming is an exercise and not a stress reliever; researches carried out by various scientists have proven the benefits of swimming in relieving stress. Under this project, I decided to swim for at least fifteen minutes a day for a period of two weeks.
To start off with, it was not easy to make swimming a part of my daily routine. The key hindrance that I faced when I started off with this project was lack of motivation to swim on a daily basis as I could not think of a proper reason why I would want to carry out this exercise on a daily basis. However, I convinced myself that I needed to do this in order to burn off the stress within me and enable productivity. Another key hindrance in my way came in the shape of laziness, especially in the form of being tired whenever I got back from work. However, since I had made up my mind that I wanted to do this to cut down the negative effects of stress on my body, I decided a fixed time where I would go for swimming daily no matter what other work I had to do.
After these two weeks of swimming on a regular basis there is one thing that I have come to conclude; swimming has helped me rediscover myself. I am saying this because earlier when I would get back home, I would be in a terrible mood and not look forward to anything. However ever since this activity kicked in my daily routine, not only did I start feeling fresh but also realized that my productivity at work went up by a phenomenal margin. Most importantly, I found myself at peace mentally as compared to earlier when my mind would be all clogged up with various forms of stress.
I would like to conclude by saying that this activity has changed me in a positive way and I would definitely continue it in the future as well.

Reference
Bickerstaff, L. (2007). Stress. New York: Rosen Pub.