{"id":5637,"date":"2022-07-13T15:28:11","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T19:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.successories.com\/blog\/?p=5637"},"modified":"2025-10-16T16:29:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:29:44","slug":"how-and-why-stress-balls-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.successories.com\/blog\/how-and-why-stress-balls-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How and Why Stress Balls Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The humble stress ball has been an office mainstay for years.  The people who own them swear by them.  Squeeze the little stress ball and your stress level drops, melting away as if by magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, the mechanism behind their function is pretty simple.  There are two things at work here, with the first being simple distraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Reasons Why Stress Balls Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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  1. The act of clenching and unclenching your fist around the stress ball gives your mind something else to focus on for a few minutes; something other than whatever it is that\u2019s been stressing you out.\u00a0 Basically, it helps take your mind off of things for a few minutes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The act of squeezing flexes the muscles in your hand.\u00a0 It\u2019s not much, but you could consider it sort of low grade, low intensity cardio for your hand.\u00a0 Doing that has the effect of slightly elevating your heart rate, which sends a bit more oxygen to your entire body.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Granted, it\u2019s not much \u2013 it\u2019s not exactly a Jane Fonda workout routine, but it\u2019s just enough to make a notable difference in your metabolism, and that slight change is enough to clear your head and reenergize you, which in turn, helps to chase away the stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Although it may not appear so at first glance, stress relief gifts<\/a>, like the stress ball, actually (or can be) a potent weapon in the war against stress, and let\u2019s face it, we live in stressful times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Stressful Times Call for Stress Balls<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    We are, after all, still feeling the lingering effects of a global pandemic, and one of the side effects of that historic event was to completely redraw the map in terms of how the world works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Who could have imagined five or six years ago that so many people would be working from home, and who would have guessed that companies would, by and large, embrace that change? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Before the pandemic, many of the largest corporations were either openly hostile to the idea of allowing their employees to work from home, or they only did it very grudgingly.  These days, it\u2019s hard to find a company that doesn\u2019t have at least a portion of their workforce based out of their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The point is, the world is in a state of flux, and there\u2019s no way of telling how long that transition period is going to be.  The changes we\u2019ve all lived through over the past couple of years have added even more stress to what was already a pretty stressful environment, so anything we can do to help reduce stress has to be counted as a win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you want to show your hardworking employees how much you appreciate them, what about sending everybody their own stress ball?  We have a number of fun designs, including, but not limited to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n