Introduction
While our life is easier compared to some years ago in many aspects, the first world has also led to new trends, problems, or even diseases.
Unknown or ignored in the past in the past, the importance of our mental health is taking the attention it deserves. We need to understand that there are few important things that our mind and body. Not taking care of it, may lead to several issues in our behavior, thinking or mood.
Stress can be characterized as a response to any occasion which is seen, deliberately or unknowingly, as a danger to our safety or happiness. Stress which we experience as unmanageable can be detected as injury by our sensory system and become part of ourselves, damaging our body.
Here are some of my tricks to make sure that we fight back and defeat our worst fears and the general stress from our life.
1. HIIT
Low intensity training may be boring and will not cause much an impact once done. However, if we switch to high intensity interval training, in just 20-minute sessions we will not just achieve more than in the low-paced session, but it will also help generate more hormones.
One of these hormones involved in the process is cortisol. Cortisol is known to manage the stress in our body.
Therefore, if you are changing to go to the next level when it comes to your workout, this may also help reduce the stress.
As with anything, everything in excess is bad. Therefore, too much workout will also not be the best option for de-stressing, because it will also have negative impact in our cortisol levels, being these too high.
2. Meditate
Meditation can provide you with a feeling of peace, harmony, and quietness. This process can help both your general wellbeing. You may use the mediation to relax and focus all the activity on fighting the stress. Not just that but being an expert on this technique can help you stay focused and keeping your inner peace. This means that, like sports, the benefits don’t end once you stop meditating, but in upcoming stressful environments and situations too.
3. Cook some pasta
When it comes to stress, it is also known that some people like cooking to disconnect from the world. Apart from that, the intake of carbohydrates can be beneficial for our mind.
Eating complex carbohydrates may be not the best idea if you are trying to lose weight and cut additional calories. However, if you are stressed, why not having your favorite recipe of Your favorite Rigatoni Bolognese or spaghetti amatriciana after a nice workout session? It’s been scientifically proved that eating pasta can increase the serotonin levels, which amongst many tasks, it helps regulate anxiety, mood, and happiness.
On the other hand, you should not abuse of too many carbs. When it comes to food, it must be important to say that ultra-processed food and sugar will have a negative impact. Therefore, it is also good to keep our diet as healthy as possible. It has a big impact in both our body and mental health.
4. Dress up down
Nature is not something in the environment, but it’s something that we can carry with ourselves. That’s why it’s important to choose the correct clothes when starting the day. For example, if you want to reduce eagerness, the best way after having your morning shower is selecting carefully natural clothes (linen, cotton, etc.) that will create a relaxed outfit. If you are stressed, dressing up with tight and elegant clothes may not be the best choice. Having a comfier garment on you will help you have a more easygoing lifestyle.
5. Explore nature
It’s said that people on villages are much happier than those living in big cities with all the traffic, pollution, and noise. It may be easier for some and more difficult for others. Nonetheless, one suggestion for those living in big cities is to try to escape for some days or do some excursions to the beach, lakes, or mountains.
Especially these ones may be the best choice because researchers have proved that since air in high altitude is charged with negative ions (atoms that have lost electrons), these molecules help hikers relax and forget about their problems.
6. Sleep, Sleep & Repeat
The function of sleeping has many processes behind that helps repair our brain and bodies. We all would like to have more time and we often tend to sacrifice our sleeping time in order to get many more things done in the day. However, with this are generating debt that we will pay the days after.
Sleeping does not just make sure that we are more productive the day after, but it helps our whole body to recover and handle the stress accordingly.
It’s a vicious circle. Stress leads to insomnia and insomnia leads to more stress.
7. Switch it off
Having multiple devices with thousands of notifications per day is not the best way to stay focused and in good mood. Apart from the constant distractions, some of these messages and pop ups will create negative feelings (war, crisis, hunger, etc.) and increase the level of stress inside our bodies.
For that reason, it is a good idea to keep the number of apps in our phone as reduced as possible and have some focus times defined in our day.
Another piece of advice is that once the workday or week are over, just toggle off the mailbox from your phone and hide the work laptop somewhere else. Even if it would seem that the world will collapse if you do so, try also to minimize the usage of your mobile phone to just those moments that really required.
8. Coffee
This one may be very obvious, but once we get into this habit is not easy to stop. We have discussed what the negative consequences of not sleeping are. The day after we need some energy, and the most accessible drug is a coffee shot. Since it seems to wake us up, we try one after another and some minutes later we are active, but our stress levels have also gone quite up. Cutting drastically coffee may be suicidal for some people. Therefore, a better idea may be to cut it progressively and replace it for healthier drinks such as green, matcha, black, and red tea. These infusions have great benefits when it comes to sleep quality, anxiety, and management of hormones
9. Eat more fruit
Either in solid state or in form of shakes and juices, fruit is very important and has a big impact on our bodies. Not just in our bodies or diet, fruits contain big amounts of different vitamins – for instance C and D-, that help us surpassing the stress threshold level. Therefore, these products can be a good booster to our anti-stress protection.
If for some reason, you think you will not reach the needed vitamin levels, having some supplements will also help us achieve our goals.
10. Breathing Exercises
This one can be a technique that is used just when we are about to blow up or collapse. The trick in those tense situations is to handle our breathing in a good, consistent way with an efficient technique.
You need to be as comfortable as you can and try to evade your mind and focus just on controlling your breathing. For example, put attention to the effect of inspiring through the nose and expiring through the moth. Counting the process will also help if you want to focus just on this activity as much as you can.
11. Spend time with animals
As with nature, spending time with animals will let us avoid our current work and responsibilities, with a more easygoing approach to life. The make us more aware of what the important aspects of life are.
Furthermore, it has been confirmed that being in contact with animals such as dogs or cats activate the oxytocin hormone, which regulates the stress and comfort.
12. Read a novel
When there are many topics going through your mind, what I do is just trying to disconnect and focusing on only single topic. The easiest way to do so is taking the favorite book from the shelf or your book eReader. Although it is said that music may be a better way to disconnect it has been demonstrated with multiple researchs that reading a science or adventure story helps us totally disconnect from our daily tasks immersing ourselves in the story. In any case, you can leave the music for your HIIT session.
13. Switch on the PS4/PS5
In the case a book is not enough for you to evade the reality and manage the anxiety, a more active solution would be going to your computer or vide console and playing an adventure or any other type of game.
As it occurs when reading, videogames help us distract ourselves with the preferred games. Videogames are engaging, fun and at the same time they are somehow challenging, getting some rewards. At the same time, as eating pasta, they increase our serotonin levels, having a positive impact on our well-being and mood.
14. Massage session
Massages can be a great complement to an exercise and apart from the muscular regeneration benefits, they also have benefits when it comes to anti-stress techniques.
They help reduce the heart rate, blood pressure and overall improving our sleep quality and mental health, giving a boost to our well-being. Having just a 15–30-minute session can be a shot of good emotions and feelings.
15. Clean your body
To conclude the list, cleaning your body and face might me a good activity to increase our mood and relaxation levels. You may start exfoliating your face, continuing with a long bath with bath salts and candles and putting a face or ice will probably the best idea after a stressful working day.
After the whole process you will leave the bathroom totally rejuvenated – and not just for your skin -.
Next steps
These are some tricks that may help you in your daily tasks and stressful activities. There may situations where you are about to explode. For these times, I encourage to remember these suggestions and apply them to you.
However, remember that like almost everything, practice makes the master. Therefore, why not putting these suggestions to work?