Ways to improve focus when you’re feeling stressed

Are you too stressed to think clearly? While a little bit of stress can improve your productivity by giving you motivation and energy, and sometimes help you to remember things, too much stress can have the opposite effect.

Stress isn’t always bad, until there’s too much

It’s Monday morning and you’re about to leave for work, but you can’t stop thinking about how many new messages you’ll find in your inbox, and the client meeting that you haven’t finished preparing for. To top it all off, it takes you 10 precious minutes to find your house keys, which were right in front of you all along.

Situations like this aren’t always a case of bad luck. While a little bit of stress can improve your productivity by giving you motivation and energy, and sometimes help you to remember things, too much stress can have the opposite effect.

What is stress?

Stress is your body’s natural reaction to harmful situations, or situations that make you feel threatened. We all experience stress, but the causes and effects of stress are different for different people. This means that:

• Something you don’t find stressful may be stressful for someone else,
• Stress can affect all different parts of your body
• How stress affects the body varies from person to person

Stress can have physical symptoms, which tend to be easy to notice – you might feel your heart racing or your muscles becoming tense, or you could get an upset stomach. But stress can also have effects on how your brain works, that you won’t necessarily notice – it can lead to racing thoughts, make your thinking seize up, or cause you to think less positively about situations.

Regardless of how stress affects you, it’s important to make sure that you’re not constantly stressed out. So it’s helpful to find ways to keep stress at bay, to prevent burnout. Making an effort to monitor your stress levels is also useful – you can do this by learning to recognise how stress affects you, including the effects it might have on your brain.

What effects can stress have on your brain?

Stress can affect your brain in different ways. It can influence the way you think and behave, and this can be affected by your personality. Here are some of the more common effects that many people will experience when they are stressed.

• Having racing thoughts
• Being unable to focus or quiet your mind
• Experiencing brain fog (lack of mental clarity)
• Worrying constantly
• Feeling fearful
• Being forgetful or disorganised
• Exercising poor judgement
• Feeling overwhelmed or pessimistic
• Having trouble sleeping
• Procrastinating or avoiding responsibility

What should you do during stressful periods?

If you notice that stress has started taking a toll on your mind, you can tackle it by taking a twofold approach. This means taking steps to address both the cause and the symptoms.

You can address the cause by:

• Taking regular breaks from work
• Getting enough sleep so your brain has recovery time
• Making time to socialise – it’s important!
• Building in time for fun and laughter

You can address the symptoms by:

• Boosting your exercise levels
• Listening to music that you enjoy
• Using relaxation techniques such as relaxed breathing and progressive muscle relaxation
• Mastering your thoughts by meditating
• Speak to your health professional about trying an integrative medicine like KeenMind which contains naturally sourced active ingredient known as Bacopa that helps support memory, focus, and concentration in times of stress 

Always read the label. Follow the directions for use. If symptoms persist, talk to your health professional.