Paul Eckert

By: Sammy Chim

It can be quite daunting taking part in stress management course if you are not sure what to expect. A lot of people do not approach with an open mind – which is vital for success.

Many people will assume that stress management courses are not necessary because they perceive stress management as common sense. My experience suggests that these people are, in fact, misinformed and they could benefit greatly from attending this type of course.

The reason for this is that a stress management course is not just about managing personal stress. It is also about learning to identify, control and benefit / reduce the stress of others.

If you are thinking of attending or recommending a course on stress for your organisation or small business, my advice is to make sure everyone (including yourself) approaches it with an open mind.

The content covered in the course will vary but the course outline will largely contain the same topics. Here is a brief outline of a typical stress management course:

- Why it is important

- The cycle

- Internal and external influences

- Optimising your state

- How to tune your state up and down

- Building resilience through exercises and nutritional awareness

- Problems vs outcomes and how to deal with both

- Awareness – How you make other stressed

- Building minimum stress teams

In the first half of the course will cover topics that will go over the definition of stress, recognising the symptoms and understanding why the management of it is important.

The second part of the stress management course will begin to focus on the factors of stress and how to recognise influences of stress (internal and external) using a variety of methods and techniques.

Following this, the stress management course will begin to help you develop skills on how to handle stress for yourself and others around you (employees, staff, etc). This part of the stress management course is very important because it gives you practical methods that have been to proven to relieve stress. From experience, members usually find this part of the course most exciting due to active participation.

The final part of the course focuses on some advanced methods of stress training such as building minimum teams, improving awareness and how to deal with problems and outcomes.

By: Ashish Jain

For managing the stress, there are two types of methods such as temporary methods and the permanent method. Temporary methods are many, but the permanent method is only one–meditation! That is the ultimate stress management product.

Meditation leads to a state of supreme happiness. But in this mad race of materialistic world, many say that they don’t have time for meditation. What a strange paradox! Meditation leads you to happiness. And you don’t find time to become happy! Don’t feel alienated with stress and be in the know of stress management balls.

Coming to the contemporary methods of stress relief, one of the popular one is–achieve stress relief through stress balls. When you are under stress, to remain without activity will add more to your stress. You are restless, and to find a way out, take something in your hand, and squeeze it. Play with it in style. It will take care of your tensions and concerns. It is a sort of diversion from the brooding state of your mind. You have something else to do than the useless thinking that goes to increase your stress and tension. Stress balls are found to be good at their limited stress relief act.

Why these stress balls do what they do- to relieve stress to some extent? Before answering this question, let me tell you the common reasons for your stress. Motivated desires are the cause for your stress. When such desires are not fulfilled, you begin to worry and this mounting worry is the cause of your stress. You expect your particular wish to fructify in a particular manner. When that does not happen, you are frustrated and the stress process begins.

The stress balls are available for the asking. You get them in departmental stores, job fairs, business/industry gatherings. They perform their job well, and you feel good handling them. You feel, as if you are engaged in some creative activity. You enjoy that unique, relieving noise. You feel some good activity is happening. It is plain joy, no reward of punishment activity. In fact, to play with it is equivalent of doing some exercise. So, it gives the benefit of an exercise and reduces the level of stress.

Another variety of stress balls is liquid balls. They too are excellent to relieve your worries. You will not get much resistance as you work out on them, but the unique feel good experience, will relieve you of the stress. You get stress balls in pairs also. This is a Chinese variety. Rub and bang the balls against each other. The peculiar noise and the physical activity work like a double benefit scheme. The desired object, stress management is achieved.