Mental Health

8 Ways To Conquer Stress

1. Exercise. If you’re like me, you’re less than excited by this one. But here’s the thing, even if you don’t have time to exercise during the week, you have 48 hours where you don’t have to work over the weekend to get at least a little bit of exercise. Even if it’s just 15-20 minutes. Most doctors may tell you that you need to get at least 20-30 minutes, but something is better than nothing, so get wha you can when you can. That will help to reduce your stress because of the endorphins that are released during that time. What most people don’t know about exercise is that the mind is very powerful, and even the memory of exercise can cause some of the same endorphins to be released as actually exercising. You may not drop weight or get the cardiovascular benefit, up from a stress perspective, it will still help.
2. Minimize chores during the non-working days. But wait a minute, aren’t weekends for catching up on chores? Here’s the thing, if you spend all weekend working on chores and things don’t really enjoy doing, then you don’t give your mind a chance to rest or a chance to actually enjoy anything, and that just adds to your stress. I think it was Jack Nicholson in The Shining who said “all work and now play makes Jack a dull boy.” So minimize the chores on the weekend. I’m not saying don’t do any, but definitely don’t spend your entire weekend working on them.
3. Disconnect. You’ve got to get rid of those electronic devices at times. Most people are somehow electronically connected to their job, and you’ve got to give yourself a break from that. So put the email away, put away the things that keep you connected to your job, when you’re not at work, and especially over the weekends or when you’re on vacation, and allow your mind a chance to breathe from that stress.
4. Pursue a passion. Find something you are passionate about and go and do some of it on a regular basis. That gives you a sense of enjoyment, it gives you a sense a something greater and better than what you do for a job. Even if you’re passionate about your job, find something else too because you’ve got to have a break from your day-to-day job. So find a passion and pursue that.
5. Spend some quality time with your family. This doesn’t mean sitting and watching TV or going to the movies, because thanks not really quality time. Quality can look different for different people, but the key is to spend that quality time with your family, whether it’s your kids, your spouse, your close friends, your parents, whoever family is, but spend some quality time with those people.
6. Schedule a micro adventure. Go do something that’s fun, that’s maybe a little bit outside your comfort zone, and you don’t have to go far to do it. It can be small, maybe a day trip, but do something that pushes you a little bit but that you’re going to find fun as well. And that might give. You some new experiences, and the mind loves new things. When we just keep doing the same things over and over again, it gets dull, and your mental capacity begins to atrophy.
7. Continue to wake up on the weekends or your days off at the same time as the rest of the week. This is hard for most people, but don’t give yourself permission to sleep in for half the day. Now why is that important. The mind works on a pattern, it’s what we call the circadian rhythm, and when we sleep in on a day or a couple of days, it messes with this rhythm. This actually deals with out hormones, not just with stress. So if you sleep in on a day you mess up that circadian rhythm, that actually increases your physical stress which then impacts your emotional stress. So if you can, get up at about the same time every day. On the weekends or your days off, take some of that time to do things that you may not otherwise get to not. I don’t mean the chores, but something that you’re passionate about, maybe spend some time reflecting, maybe just give yourself some quiet time and give your mind to expand and to breathe because we live in a fast-paced world that just doesn’t do that.
8. Prepare for the upcoming week on the weekends. Spend some time regularly preparing for the immediate future. Why? Because then as you get into the week, you’re not left going “what was it I was going to do, I can’t seem to remember everything that was on my to-do list, the appointments, and all that kind of stuff.” So spend some time preparing for the week, and that way as you get into it, your mind isn’t taxed with all this kind of stuff, but you can actually just get, get productive, and get on with other things.