One Tip That Helps You Beat Stress

SMOKING VS EXERCISING

In the middle of the working day, it's an uphill challenge to decide between running and smoking — to beat the stress.

I am not here to PREACH you what to do or what’s suitable for you. I am here to DISSECT your train of thought and tell you what pushes you towards smoking.

Run or Smoke?

What causes you to smoke?

We all know the story, it's fairly simple & routine.

You’re 5hrs into your working day — you solved hard coding problems, or spoke with your clientele or stakeholders, or had a long day doing customer support calls. And in this process, you were multi-tasking and switching between different contexts or faced rejections from clients and stakeholders, or ran into multiple code issues.

… you’re now finally STRESSED!

You want to take a break, DE-STRESS, and the BELL rang — you need to smoke.

It’s a HABIT for you now. What’s a HABIT?

HABIT: You do it repeatedly and unconsciously

Your Mind/Psychology

As famous authors — Charles Duhigg or James Clear — wrote in their books, your habits can be divided into 4 phases.

Cue, Craving, Response, Reward.

Your mind recognizes a Cue, drives you towards the cravings, you respond to those cravings, and you see a reward with the response.

How your mind sees a smoking habit

1. Cue: you worked for 5hrs , you’re stressed
2. Craving: you need a cigarette
3. Response: you go out and smoke
4. Reward: you feel de-stressed

How your mind sees stress eating

1. Cue: you worked for 5hrs, you’re stressed. Your body releases stress hormones (cortisol)
2. Craving: Your mind craves some happy hormones (Dopamine). So you start craving your favorite food
3. Response: you eat your favorite food (say icecream)
4. Reward: happy hormones are released, you feel de-stressed and NICER

How your mind sees running or exercising

1. Cue: you worked for 5hrs, you’re stressed. Your body releases stress hormones (cortisol)
2. Craving: Your mind craves some happy hormones (Dopamine). It needs a reward
3. Response: you go and run or work-out for 20min, and sweat,
4. Reward: your body releases happy hormones, you feel de-stressed and NICER

As simple as that.

Is it that easy to change it ?

No, its not. But this is the starting point. You identify the cues that are making you stressed and thereby leading you to stress-eat or smoke.

Bad or unhealthy Habits are so inseparably integrated into our lives, that we DONT even know that we are doing them.

So, we have to BE CONSCIOUS and identify the CUES. Once you identify then you can ACT on them. You can try and change the responses gradually, and under someone’s guidance — if needed. As you feel the reward with a changed response, your mind starts liking it , and it slowly becomes your new and healthier habit.

But don't be dejected if you gradually fall back to the older habits. That is bound to happen, and it’s a slow process. Start again, do it again, change your responses, enjoy rewards, be patient.

Conclusion

How do you inculcate exercise into your daily life ? Is it so easy that you can replace a BAD HABIT (say smoking) with a GOOD HABIT (exercising)? NO.

(But who am I to say that smoking is a bad habit? You may have a premium genetic wiring or the best DNA structure in your body , and smoking may not be as destructive to you as it is to others. )

To change a destructive or unhealthy habit, you must start with identifying the CUES, and then start acting on them.