Dealing Effectively With Financial Stress

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Having to deal with money worries can be frustrating. Financial problems can take a huge toll on your mental and physical health, your relationships, and your overall quality of life. Feeling beaten down by money worries can adversely impact your sleep, self-esteem, and energy levels. It can leave you feeling angry, ashamed, or fearful, fuel tension and arguments with those closest to you, exacerbate pain and mood swings, and even increase your risk of depression and anxiety. You may resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as drinking, abusing drugs, or gambling to try to escape your worries. Whatever your circumstances, there are ways to get through these tough economic times, ease stress and anxiety, and regain control of your finances. 

A.     Plan and stick to it: Just as financial stress can be caused by a wide range of different money problems, so there are an equally wide range of possible solutions. The plan to address your specific problem could be to live within a tighter budget, curb your online spending, and so on.

B.     Create a monthly budget: Whatever your plan to relieve your financial problems, setting and following a monthly budget can help keep you on track and regain your sense of control.

C.     Manage your overall stress: Resolving financial problems tends to involve small steps that reap rewards over time. In the current economic climate, it is unlikely your financial difficulties will disappear overnight. But that does not mean you cannot take steps right away to ease your stress levels and find the energy and peace of mind to better deal with challenges in the long-term.

D.    Take inventory of your finances: If you’re struggling to make ends meet, you may think you can ease your stress by leaving bills unopened, avoiding phone calls from creditors, or ignoring bank and credit card statements. But denying the reality of your situation will only make things worse in the long run. The first step to devising a plan to solve your money problems is to detail your income, debt, and spending over the course of at least one month.

E.     Talk to someone: When you are facing money problems, there is often a strong temptation to bottle everything up and try to go it alone. Many of us even consider money a taboo subject, one not to be discussed with others. You may feel awkward about disclosing the amount you earn or spend, feel shame about any financial mistakes you have made, or embarrassed about not being able to provide for your family. But bottling things up will only make your financial stress worse. In the current economy, where many people are struggling through no fault of their own, you will likely find others are far more understanding of your problems.

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Mindful Eating: Benefits and Practices

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Mindful eating is maintaining an in-the-moment awareness of the food and drink consume, observing rather than judging how the food makes you feel and the signals your body sends about taste, satisfaction, and fullness.

For many of us, our busy lives make mealtimes rushed affairs or we find ourselves eating in the car commuting to work, at the desk in front of a computer screen, or parked on the couch watching TV. We eat mindlessly, shoveling food down regardless of whether we’re still hungry or not.

Eating mindfully can help you to:

– Slow down and take a break from the hustle and bustle of your day, easing stress and anxiety.
– Examine and change your relationship with food—helping you, for example, to notice when you turn to food for reasons other than hunger.
– Derive greater pleasure from the food you eat, as you learn to slow down and more fully appreciate your meals and snacks.
– Make healthier choices about what you eat by focusing on how each type of food makes you feel after eating it.
– Improve your digestion by eating slower.
– Feel fuller sooner and by eating less food.
– Make a greater connection to where your food comes from, how it’s produced, and the journey it’s taken to your plate.
– Eat in a healthier, more balanced way.

How to practice mindful eating

To practice mindful eating, it’s important to eat with all your attention rather than on “automatic pilot” or while you’re reading, looking at your phone, watching TV, daydreaming, or planning what you’re doing later. When your attention strays, gently bring it back to your food and the experience of cooking, serving, and eating.

Below are ways to practice mindful eating;

Start by taking a few deep breaths and considering the health value of each different piece of food. While nutrition experts continually debate exactly which foods are “healthy” and which are not, the best rule of thumb is to eat food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it.

Employ all your senses while you’re shopping, cooking, serving, and eating your food. How do different foods look, smell, and feel as you chop? How do they sound as they’re being cooked? How do they taste as you eat?

Put your utensils down between bites. Take time to consider how you feel—hungry, satiated—before picking up your utensils again. Listen to your stomach, not your plate. Know when you’re full and stop eating.

Take a bite, and notice how it feels in your mouth. How would you describe the texture now? Try to identify all the ingredients, all the different flavors. Chew thoroughly and notice how you chew and what that feels like.

Focus on how your experience shifts moment to moment. Do you feel yourself getting full? Are you satisfied? Take your time, stay present and don’t rush the experience.

Be curious and make observations about yourself, as well as the food you’re about to eat. Notice how you’re sitting, sit with good posture but remain relaxed. Acknowledge your surroundings but learn to tune them out. Focusing on what’s going on around you may distract from your process of eating and take away from the experience.

Tune into your hunger: How hungry are you? You want to come to the table when you’re hungry, but not ravenous after skipping meals. Know what your intentions are in eating this specific meal. Are you eating because you’re actually hungry or is it that you’re bored, need a distraction, or think it’s what you should be doing?

Give gratitude and reflect on where this food came from, the plants or animals involved, and all the people it took to transport the food and bring it onto your plate. Being more mindful about the origins of our food can help us all make wiser and more sustainable choices.

Continue to eat slowly as you talk with your dining companions, paying close attention to your body’s signals of fullness. If eating alone, try to stay present to the experience of consuming the meal.

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