Does stress get the best of you even though you live in Toronto, one of the best cities to live in the world?

  • It’s clean and has a lot of beautiful parks where you can enjoy mind-calming walks.
  • It has a great public transit system and lots of bike roads so that you don’t need to worry about transportation.
  • It provides a welcoming environment of tolerance, acceptance, and cultural diversity.

So how come you feel stress living here?

Why might you feel stress?

One reason to feel stress is having too many things on your plate and not enough time to do them.

Just 20 years ago, people didn’t have an abundance of opportunities, entertainment, content, fitness options, and so on.

All these things compete for your attention, which is scarce at best.

You jump from one to another, trying to do as many of them as possible.

Even if you’re trying to concentrate on something, you have a lot of distractions going on around you.

All these things create stress because you feel you’re missing on opportunities.

Another source of stress is the inability to fulfill your commitments as you get caught up in other things.

And for sure social media play a major role in keeping you stressed out as they keep feeding your mind with messages that other people are doing so great while you’re struggling.

Watch this video to learn how to cure stress instantly.

How do you ease stress?

Anyway, as a life coach in Toronto, here are my four best tips to relieve stress in the short term.

Tip# 1: Acknowledge stress and breathe deeply

Every time I realize I feel stress, my breathing stifles.

So I take a step back mentally.

I acknowledge the very fact of having stress.

I thank my mind for creating this feeling because I know that it is scared and trying to protect me.

And then I restore my breathing.

This helps me calm down.

Tip# 2: Use an anchor to combat stress

An anchor is an NLP term that means a gesture, a thing, or really anything that you associate with a particular state or feeling.

Tony Robbins gives this example of an anchor: you come to your father’s funeral crushed by his passing.

And someone gives you a pat on the shoulder.

Your body remembers that you felt bad when you got that pat.

Next time someone gives you a similar pat, you feel bad, seemingly for no reason.

You can use this anchor concept in your favor when it comes to stress.

For example, whenever you feel stress, do some simple thing like a gesture and think in your mind that now you’re feeling better.

For instance, I straighten shoulders as much as possible.

Tip# 3: Practice meditation

First, meditation calms your mind in the long term.

So when stress arrives, you are better equipped for handling it.

You are less reactive to stress.

And more specifically, meditation teaches you to disconnect from your thoughts.

As you develop this skill, you can start using it to disconnect from your thoughts of stress.

Tip# 4: Write down and prioritize your tasks

Since stress is often a result of facing too many tasks, an effective way to reduce it is to disconnect your mind from thinking about all those tasks.

This is indeed possible and in fact, might be even easier than you think.

You simply need to write all those tasks down.

By doing so, you “download” them from your mind.

And you keep it calm because it knows you’ll return to them at some point.

And it doesn’t have to worry about them.

Break through your barriers

I’d love to work with you as a stress management coach in Toronto. Feel free to check out my services and book a free clarity session today.

Author's Bio: 

I’m Roman Mironov, a certified life coach in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

I do life coaching online and in-person to help clients live a happier life by breaking through what holds them back.

The first 1-hour session is free so that you can understand life coaching costs and what it can do for you and I can see if I can help you.

Contact me to arrange a coaching session today!