Reducing and Managing stress - Research Paper Example

Relaxation can be provided to body and mind and it does not need extra time. Addition of extra hours in a day does not reduce stress and enhance relaxation. Even sleeping or being lazy excessively cannot reduce the level of stress. The best way to reduce stress and fresh up one’s body and mind is to increase the physical activities. The cheapest and easiest physical exercise is walking. it can be done any place any time. It even does not require machines or tools for exercising. Walking is far better than lying down on bed for a long time in order to get relaxed.

It makes a person more dull, tired and stressed. This is because our body does not accept sedentary life style. It requires movement. Therefore, walking involves the movement of all parts of body and makes the body and mind fresh, active and happy. As, I myself am quite stressed these days, therefore, I intend to set up a plan to change my health behavior and achieve my goal within 4 weeks of time, starting from second week and ending up at the sixth week. Plan: My plan is to daily walk for a while twice a day.

Early in the morning before going for work and then in the evening after coming back from work. I plan to start from few minutes of walking and day by day increase the time to walk. Goal: My body is not used to walk and perform physical activities. . I fell and got hurt on my foot. My foot had twisted and was immensely aching. This acted as a potential barrier and I was not able to walk for four days. Potential Enabler: After I was hurt and could not walk for constant four days, my determination became a bit shaky.

As it was just the beginning, I became lazier. I would not even have started walking on the fifth day of my injury of a neighborhood friend of mine had not encouraged me. He had also started walking along me and was to achieve the same goal like me. The thought that he will achieve his goal and I won’t also boosted me up and enabled me to start walking again as soon as possible. Week Distance Walked Potential Barrier Potential Enabler Week 2 0.5 km Hurt on foot Competitor friend Week 3 1 km None None Week 4 1.

75 km Work load Self motivation Week 5 3 km None Increment in stamina Week 6 3 km None Will of maintenance In the second week I targeted to walk 1 kilometer but could not do so due to a potential barrier that was a hurt on foot. But very soon I recovered and managed to walk again due to the motivation by a friend who also acted as my competitor as he had started the same plan along with me. In the third week I again walked half a kilometer as I had become slow. But, as there was neither a potential barrier nor a potential enabler, therefore I was neither able to increase the distance nor decrease it, just managed to maintain it.

The fourth week introduced new potential barrier as well as potential enabler. The barrier was that I had excessive work load that resulted in fatigue and lack of time and I was not able to walk much. Yet, despite of being tired, my determination and self motivation encouraged and enabled me to