Kindness begins with you. Listen, I know this might sound soft or overly delicate but it’s importance is backed by science. Filling up your schedule or over taxing yourself can create anxiety, leading to chronic stress. Defense mechanisms like the fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses are instinctive but not calming. In this state your body is focused on surviving, not thriving, which will halt or even reverse progress to your physical fitness goals.
Recognizing this and practicing breathing techniques can have an immediate calming effect. Building down time into your schedule to balance your daily activity and structured exercise program helps to decrease the recurrence of future stressful episodes. This empowers you to improve physically and mentally. Ensuring that your exercise program includes an appropriate work to rest ratio allows you to benefit from that healthy stress.
Stress is an unavoidable and necessary part of life but learning how to deal with it, by using it to your advantage will launch you out of survival mode and allow you to thrive!