Feeling stressed and anxious is quite common. According to a study by the American Institute Of Stress, 77% of people have reported physical symptoms caused by extreme stress. It is important to learn how to manage and reduce stress levels, as constantly having high stress levels increases the chances of high blood pressure, heart disease and other medical conditions.
Here are 5 ways to reduce stress levels which you can learn and adopt:
Top 5 Ways To Reduce Stress Levels
There are a lot of ways to cope with stress. However, often people start coping using cigarettes, alcohol and substance abuse. Hence, it is important to understand healthy coping mechanisms and implement them in our daily lives.
Meditate
Meditation helps you to focus your mind on one thing at a time. It also helps you destress and relaxes your mind.
Practising meditation should be included in your daily routine as it helps to declutter your mind and focus your attention.
There are several benefits of meditation, some of them are:
– Lowers blood pressure
Being anxious and stressed constantly increases a person’s blood pressure. Meditation can help you to calm down and destress and this helps people lower their blood pressure.
– Regulates mood
When you meditate your mind is in a state of relaxation and thus people generally feel lighter, calmer and happier after they meditate.
– Increases self-awareness
With the help of meditation, one can achieve self-actualisation. It takes time and patience to reach the self-awareness stage. However, it helps you to fully realise who you are and helps you accept yourself.
– Improves sleep
As we have learnt above, meditation helps to relax the body and the mind and this in turn helps to improve your sleep.
There are several guided meditation available on YouTube and several apps both on the App Store and Play Store that can help you practice a mindfulness journey.
Maintain a healthy lifestyle
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle helps to bring balance; it includes having healthy and balanced meals, working out regularly, and having a proper sleep schedule.
There is a famous saying that “A healthy body is a healthy mind”. Physical activity is great for both physical and mental health. It helps to release endorphins and acts as a natural stress buster. Moreover, having balanced meals keeps the mind healthy and fit which allows you to feel more energetic and happy.
In addition to maintaining a balanced lifestyle, you must involve activities that you enjoy in your day-to-day routine. It could include your hobbies or things that help you destress such as dancing, painting, listening to music, running and much more. These leisure activities are a great stress buster.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn’t necessarily mean keeping busy 24/7, it is also important to rest. Remember to take sufficient breaks between heavy workloads as this allows you to relax and take breaks.
It is also important to maintain a healthy sleep cycle that consists of 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Having a healthy sleep schedule is an important factor as it helps your body rest.
Keep a journal
Journaling is a practice that allows you to write down your emotions, thoughts, and feelings. There are many different types of journals, and a few of them are:
- Gratitude Journal
In a gratitude journal, one writes down things that they are grateful for. It is helpful as it allows you to be more positive and happy.
- Diary journal
Diary provides a safe space for sharing your feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc. It is a healthy way to express yourself openly.
- Goal journal
A goal journal helps you to set and prioritize goals as well as track their progress. This practice allows you to feel more productive and also helps in utilizing and managing time.
Maintaining a daily journal is a great way to reduce stress levels, it allows you to clear out your thoughts and is a positive way to release emotions.
Journaling helps to reflect on your thoughts which can also help you identify what causes you stress. Several psychologists highly recommend journaling and meditating in order to deal with stress, anxiety, fear, and much more.
Additionally, maintaining a journal also helps to stay focused by allowing you to prioritise your goals, and helps you track your progress.
Apart from this, journaling is also beneficial as it improves your communication skills and provides you with a safe space to openly share your feelings.
Also read: How To Move From Desire To Action
Listen to music
Music is a great way to reduce stress levels. You may have noticed that when you listen to upbeat music, you generally feel happier and energetic compared to when you listen to slow songs, you feel sad and low.
Listening to music has several benefits, it allows you to relax and provides a healthy distraction. Music allows you to openly express yourself and helps you feel understood.
Music can easily regulate our mood. Upbeat music may make you feel more energetic and productive while calm and relaxing music can help you focus and also helps some people sleep more soundly.
Travel frequently
Travelling is one of the best ways to boost your mental health. It helps not only to reduce stress levels but also increases productivity and creativity.
It’s easy to get overworked, be it at the office or at home doing numerous chores. Fulfilling family and official obligations can cause severe stress. All this leads to an increase in blood pressure and depression which in turn can cause various health issues.
Planning a short trip to a new place and spending time relaxing with family or friends or alone and learning a new language, tasting new food, trekking, and watching the sunset and sunrise are some of the ways to distract you from day-to-day routine boring tasks. Exposing yourself to nature is a great way to heal oneself. Physical activity helps you to be physically fit. It not only helps to reduce blood pressure but also reduces the symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. Nature helps to elevate your moose and sunshine increases the Vitamin D in the body.
Thus you get to relax and be able to have sound sleep.
Conclusion
It is quite common to feel stressed and anxious. However, constantly feeling extreme levels of stress and anxiety can lead to many mental and physical health issues and hence it is important to learn healthy ways to cope with it.
There are several different things people do when they are stressed out, some may seek out unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcohol, smoking or substance abuse.
However, it is important to understand that these mechanisms only harm us in the long run and hence it is essential to look at better and healthier alternatives to reduce stress levels mentioned above.
