9 Simple Ways to Relieve Stress

9 Simple Ways to Relieve Stress

Stress can make you feel frustrated and irritable, especially when it seems it is getting out of control. Phycologists believe that stress is part of human life. Its causes range from minor to major crises that people experience either in their homes, workplaces, or any other place where they spend their time. Sometimes stress can become overwhelming or grow to a chronic level causing a severe toll on your well-being.

But if you do not need to worry when you find yourself in a situation where you are overwhelmed by stress and anxiety. All you need to do is to have some quick and effective stress relievers that will help you to calm your body and mind efficiently. The reliever that you will choose will depend on the circumstances and place that you are in. For instance, dancing can be applicable when you are in your living room at home but not in your workplace. With this understanding, this article provides you with nine best ways to relieve stress, to help you choose which one will work best for you in different circumstances.

1. Listen to music

Music is known to work wonders when it comes to relaxing the body and the mind. Soothing or slow-pace instrumental music can induce calm that lowers heart rate, blood pressure, and, more importantly, stress hormones. In the case, music is not your thing you do not need to worry. You can try to listen to natural sounds like those of birds, rivers, or ocean. These natural sounds provide a similar relaxing effect to the music.

2. Talk it out with family or a friend

Having an excellent and healthy relationship with your relatives and friends can help reduce your risks of anxiety and help you get through stressful times. A reassuring and encouraging voice, even for a short time, help fantastically relieve your stress. Having friends and family by your side in difficult times gives you a feeling of belonging and self-worth, a feeling that everyone desperately needs to overcome such situations. Therefore, whenever you feel overwhelmed by stress, take a break and call or visit a friend or a close relative, and talk about what you are going through.

3. Laugh

Laughter helps to improve your health and relieves stress by lowering the concentration of stress-causing hormones in the body. It also tricks your nervous system into making you feel happy. The fact is, it is hard to feel anxious when you are laughing. Thus, whenever you laugh you make your body and mind feel relaxed and at peace. In order to laugh, you can watch comedy plays, movies, cartoons, or listen to funny stories, among other things that would create a smile and laughter on lips.

4. Do some exercise

although exercising means taking physical activity, it does not necessarily require you to do a cumbersome task. A simple physical activity, like taking a walk around your home compound or office or standing and stretching, can help reduce stress. Doing physical activities helps to relieve stress by lowering stress hormones like cortisol and increase the concentration of endorphins, which improve your mood and also act as a painkiller. Activities like jogging or gardening can help to improve the quality of your sleep, which is profoundly affected by anxiety and stress.

5. Take enough sleep

It is common knowledge that stress can cause someone to lose sleep. Unfortunately, lack of sleep can increase stress and its effect on one’s well-being. Ensuring you get enough sleep can be an effective stress reliever. Good sleep help to relax your body and mind, hence reducing your anxiety. In the time of stress, you need to identify measures you can use to get yourself a good sleep. Such actions can be taking a physical activity that will make your body feel tired and in need of rest, reading a big book, or watching a boring TV program.

6. Try practicing Yoga

Yoga is among the stress relievers that are quite popular in the present world. Though the styles used in Yoga differ, they all have a common goal of uniting the body and the mind by creating breath awareness. Research has shown that Yoga does enhance mood and can even act as an antidepressant medicine to treat anxiety and depression. Additionally, researchers also believe that Yoga has a significant effect on stress response and nervous system.

7. Taking healthy diet

Having a poor diet can cause higher reactivity towards your stress. Taking food substances that have a high concentration of stimulants like nicotine, caffeine, or alcohol may increase your stress levels instead of reducing them. Unfortunately, when one takes these substances, he feels relieved, but this is only an instant feeling of which the long-time effect is that they will make you feel more stressed. Taking healthy food like fruits and vegetables and avoiding refined food will help create energy balance in your body, hence prevent you from feeling irritated.

8. Writing down

Noting down what you are going through is another way of relieving stress. This exercise acts as a way of releasing what is causing stress within you. As you write your problems down, it is also good to note the things you are grateful for. Being thankful helps you to see the circumstances you are going through in a different perspective. This may help eliminate the anxiety you had and create a sense of inner peace.

9. Learn to say no

Sometimes stresses are caused by having too much to do within a very short time or being assigned responsibilities that are beyond your abilities. Learning to say “no” when necessary will help keep yourself out of too much pressure that can cause stress or increase the effects of stress in your health and your work performance.

Conclusion

It is difficult to avoid altogether situations that can cause stress in our lives. The question is not how one can avoid circumstances that can cause stress, but how one can handle stresses when they come. Therefore, mastering some tips on how you can keep stress under control is vital for one to live a happy life. The above discussion has provided you with a variety of stress relievers tips. Find the one that works best for you, master it, and use it to relieve stress and keep your body and mind calm and in peace.