PeopleKeys Managing Stress Course: New Online Class Explores the Connection Between Stress and Personality Type

Kaitlyn Miller 

Article from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10742029.htm

Today PeopleKeys announces their newest product, the DISC Managing Stress Course. There are so many factors that go into stress - it's important to realize that what stresses you and how you should handle it depends on your personality style.

Boardman, Ohio (PRWEB) May 21, 2013

Recent data from the American Medical Association estimates that 43% adults have experienced negative effects on their health due to stress. The AMA similarly believe that the impact of stress is much more significant than many people realize, attributing 75% to 90% of all doctor’s visits to stress-related illnesses.

Stress is something that many Americans accept as a normal part of daily life. 

Unfortunately, left untreated stress can cause a great many ill-effects on a person’s physical and emotional well-being. Serious medical conditions such as hypertension, chronic headache, depression, anxiety, asthma, diabetes, heart problems, stomach pain, and skin conditions are in many cases a direct product of excessive stress.

Currently, there are quite a few treatment options for individuals suffering from extreme chronic stress. Exercise, meditation, changes in diet, yoga, are all commonly suggested stress management techniques. Yet because individual physical and emotional responses to stress are so varied, blanket solutions like these are rarely effective for everyone. Rather than finding ways to treat the effects of stress, experts believe that it is better to focus on the root of the problem through understanding the situations that trigger stress in the first place.

Just as individual reactions to stress are so different, stress triggers also vary widely from person to person. Recent research from PeopleKeys shows that the most successful way to determine an individual’s unique stress triggers is through an understanding of personality type. To that end, PeopleKeys recently announced the launch of their personality-based DISC Managing Stress Course.

The DISC Managing Stress Course can be taken online in under two hours, and provides powerful diagnostic tools for identifying a person’s personality type, levels of stress, and stress triggers. The DISC Stress Management Course begins with a comprehensive personality test designed to identify the personality type of the test-taker. Once personality type has been determined, the Stress Management Couse provides insight into the ways that stress affects behavior, and provides clear and effective personality-driven strategies for preventing and managing stress. This is done with a personal stress evaluation, which allows participants to chart stress levels in ten key areas related to stress.

The course is interactive, and gages progress through short quizzes. As a preventative stress-management tool, the Managing Stress Course helps participants: 

•     Identify common stressors based on personality type
•     Pinpoint individual stress triggers
•     Debunk facts and myths about stress
•     Increase understanding of the “fight or flight” response
•     Recognize physical and emotional symptoms of stress
•     Understand the difference between work mode and relaxation mode
•     Assess, plan, implement, and maintain a plan for chronic stress prevention
•     Recognize common stress signals
•     Achieve and maintain a healthy balance in life

You can’t change your personality in order to reduce stress, but you can learn to anticipate and manage the situations that trigger feelings of excessive stress. This takes careful self-analysis. No personality is immune to the effects of stress, but awareness is 90% of the solution.

For more information on DISC and the personality-based DISC Managing Stress Course, please contact PeopleKeys.

About PeopleKeys 

PeopleKeys has been providing tools to measure the connection between personality and human behavior for over 30 years. PeopleKeys believes that an understanding of human behavior can be used to improve relationships, streamline productivity, resolve conflict, and reduce stress. For more information about PeopleKeys and their DISC solutions, please contact Marketing Manager Kaitlyn Miller at 330-599-5580 x113.

Kaitlyn Miller 

Article from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10742029.htm

Putting Stress in its Place in Your Life

By BROOKE MCDONALD 
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/

“You’ve been uptight lately,” my mom said the other day over lunch. We were celebrating my twenty-second birthday.

Although I can’t stand spicy food, I dribbled Tabasco sauce over my fajitas and took a bite, eyes immediately watering, mouth burning. I have good reasons to be uptight, I thought, shoveling the spicy food into my mouth.

The past few weeks, life had seemed to be a constant stream of stresses, and I hadn’t handled them well. A new job was giving me a steep learning curve. Rush hour had been brutal. I wasn’t sleeping well. Freelance projects on the side took up all my spare time.

All this had contributed to irritation in my interactions with family and friends, frustration at things I couldn’t change, and super-sensitivity to any perceived failures at work or at home.

Suddenly, the awareness of my super-stress hit me like a mouthful of hot jalapeños. I realized how ridiculous I must sound to my mom. Twenty-two should be a fiesta, a time of exploration and growth. But the stressors I was encountering — typical stressors for adults of any age — were sabotaging my youth, health, and everyday happiness.

April is National Stress Awareness Month. Considering that it’s tax season, we’re a ways off from another calendar holiday, and winter storms where I live have kept our spring season gloomy, it seems fitting.

It’s no news that unceasing high stress has a negative effect upon health. According to WebMD, 40 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress. As health care professionals promote public awareness about the common causes and symptoms of stress this month, we’d do well to consider the long-term medical effects, too.

Two recent studies agree that negative responses to everyday stress can have a negative effect on your long-term health.

A longitudinal study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Irvine found that reacting negatively to stress from even small events increased the risk of psychological distress and mood disorders among the 700 adults they studied.

Penn State’s study of the effects of stress was even more fascinating. Researchers spoke on the phone with over 2,000 adults for eight nights in a row, asking simple questions about the events of their day and their mood. In both projects, researchers found that people who handled stress badly on a day-to-day basis were more susceptible to ill mental health and chronic diseases later in life.

It seems that the research supports the age-old quip “attitude is everything.” The idea that our long-term health because of our present choices is not new, but it should be a wake-up call to those of us who do not pay attention to how we are reacting to our stress.

Beyond being aware of our stress this month, let’s take one step further and make a plan to react better to it.

Some Tips for De-Stressing Your Life

In honor of National Stress Awareness Month, I’m focusing on changing the things I can and reacting more positively to the things I can’t. Here’s what this will look like in my daily life:

• Stop fueling frustration. When I feel a burst of work-related or personal frustration, I’m not going to waste emotional energy fuming about it. My goal is to think of one thing I can do right now to make the situation better, and do it. Fueling the fire of my irritation will only tie my hands to solve whatever problem I’m facing. This positive, action-oriented reaction will help me keep stress at bay.
• Keep things in perspective by writing them down. Lots of our problems aren’t even worth our stress and can seem especially silly when you actually articulate them. This month I will name my stressors on paper and gauge how worthy they are of distress. I’m willing to bet most of them aren’t worth worrying over.
• Spend time with positive people. I heard on the radio recently that if you are easily prone to stress and discouragement, you should intentionally surround yourself with people who are opposite. I’m going to make time in my busy schedule for quality time with the sunny souls in my life and soak in their positive reactions.
• Writer and theologian Charles Swindoll has said “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.” With recent psychological studies showing the importance of how we react, it’s extremely important to be aware of our reactions and work on reacting more positively.

BROOKE MCDONALD
Article from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/

3 Easy, Inexpensive Ways To Manage Stress

by MELISASource in Career
May 13, 2013 10:53 am

We all know the damaging health effects that stress can have on our minds and bodies. It has even been deemed as a link to long-term conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Yet with so much happening in the course of a day, it is becoming more challenging for the traditional methods of alleviating stress to be completely successful.

Stress has now changed from being something to “treat” or “fix” to something that requires continuous health maintenance. The more we try to do to end it completely, the more that happens to bring it back -- and over time, this cycle can pack a hefty punch to overall wellness.

In other words: The trips to the spa and mini-vacations are still really great ways to help with stress, but with the state of the world, there is an even greater need to practice stress management daily.

Below are three simple—and inexpensive things you can incorporate in your daily routine to help keep stress at bay.

Get Up, Get Out, and Get Something

Breaking away from the stresses of life doesn’t have to necessarily mean doing something elaborate or costly. Getting up and out of your current environment and getting one of the following may help immensely:

• Fresh air
• Change of scenery (even if it is just to a different room)
• A short walk (sometimes 3-10 minutes is all that is needed)
• A quick “vent-chat” with a good friend

Turn It Off…Turn It On

We all love to be "in the know" when it comes to what’s happening in the world, but sometimes the constant and fast-paced feed of images and information can actually do more to elevate our stress rather than reduce it. And trust me: your body will definitely alert you: your blood pressure, respirations, and heart rate will begin to rise the more you watch your screen.

Be sure that you are making not just one, but several moments throughout your day to turn it all off—disconnect from social media and the internet, and unglue yourself from the TV. Do not just put the phone on silent—turn it off too and put it out of sight.

Get yourself into some silence if you can. Or, turn on something more soothing like relaxing music, nature sounds, or motivational/inspirational speaking messages instead. Your vital signs will thank you.

Get In The Habit Of "Doing The Most"

Don’t just say that you want to keep your stress managed—do all that you can to make it a way of life. That means, assessing your day, associations, and behaviors on a regular basis to remove and otherwise guard yourself from what adds stress to your day in advance. Ongoing tweaks of habits and daily rituals here and there are the key to ensuring your mental and emotional wellness remains in balance.

Remember, your mind is a temple—and the only one that is responsible for guarding what is fed into your temple and its care is you. Also remember that it is never a good practice to allow stress to build up. You do not have to wait until vacation time or until you have "extra money" to do something about it. By using a few simple practices to make stress management a lifestyle, you can ensure that your temple is secure for not just a moment, but for life.

What are some things that you do to make stress management a part you’re your daily lifestyle? Share with me below or tell me about it at: melisasource@yahoo.com