Managing stress routinely is a key component of mental wellness and overall health. Stressful elements face us daily, so remaining proactive and intentional about how we deal with them can help us regulate the process and maintain our equilibrium, rather than become overwhelmed or anxious in the process. Below are five tips for finding ways to remove stress from your day and sink into deeper calm:
1. Get Outdoors!
Spending time outdoors has many therapeutic effects. Vitamin D helps boost your mood and help you feel a greater sense of peace and connection. Whether it’s taking a walk in your city, or going on a hike in the wilderness, spending time in nature is a wonderful mindfulness activity as well. Be intentional and reflective or tune into the sights and sounds around you: either way, spending time outside every day is a natural way to stay in tune and cultivate deeper connection.
2. Writing
Writing is a simple, yet powerful way to process emotions and held give you deeper insight, space for reflection, as well as a meditative mindset for externalizing difficult experiences. Creating a daily writing routine can be a great tool for personal reflection and growth.
3. Practice Intentional Self-Care: Massage, Meditation and Tuning out Social Media
Scheduling a massage, other spa experience, meditation and yoga, can all be great practices for self-care. Maintaining a varied routine for self care in a proactive manner can help maintain elements in your routine to help keep cope with stress. Tuning out social media can also be beneficial to creating intentional space for mindfulness. Social media can also intensify feelings of stress, depression and anxiety, so taking intentional time away and also remaining mindful about time spent online is key to creating a de-stressed environment.
4. Be Intentional about your Nutrition
Research suggests that when we eat well-balanced, nutritious diets, our mental and physical health is stronger. The long-term impact of stressful events can also be lessened when we maintain healthy diets high in fresh fruits and vegetables and lean proteins.
5. Rest Up!
Harvard Health research found that sleep impacts our ability to both form new memories and retain memories as well. Both short-term and long-term memory is impaired when we lack sleep. In order to create better overall sleep routines: establish a sleep routine that allows for 7-8 hours of nightly rest, be mindful about caffeine and alcohol consumption, especially several hours before bed, and make sure to maintain other de-stress and self-care routine.
Whether you can adapt one or several of these elements into your routine, the key is consistency and patience. Allowing yourself to be present with and process stressful events in a mindful way, while maintaining other self-care rituals, like time in nature, journaling and meditation, are ways that you can begin to implement new elements into your routine for stress relief, personal balance and deeper fulfillment.