The last few years have been some of the most stressful times we have ever experienced. Even though you can’t influence the global situation, you do have the ability to control how you react to it.
Here are some of the best ways for stress management in general and strengthen your personal resources to handle stress better.
Exercise
Exercise and a physically active lifestyle will support you throughout your life with many things and help you relieve stress. Walking or jogging are simple forms of physical activity that you can easily incorporate into your daily schedule. Both can improve your health in the long run. In addition, taking a walk in the fresh air during your lunch break will help you clear your head and work more effectively with renewed energy.
Listen to relaxing music
Combine your workout with motivating music to maximize the stress-relieving effects of exercise. Listen to music according to your mood. What supports exercise is rhythm. There’s a reason group fitness classes with music are so popular. It’s more fun, more motivating, and many movement sequences simply succeed better.
Make sure you get enough sleep
Little sleep has many negative effects on your body and mind. When you are well rested, you have more energy, are more concentrated and can simply accomplish more. Healthy sleep can also help you reduce stress and make you more stress resistant. Recommendations for adequate amounts of sleep vary, but often recommend sleep times between 6-8 hours for an adult. Of course, this also depends on habits and individual biorhythms. Listen to your body, and you’ll probably notice pretty quickly if you haven’t slept enough. Try to adjust your habits, especially in the evening. Why not lie down and sleep at 9-10pm instead of much later? Being open to changing your habits can go a long way in helping you improve your sleep patterns and reduce stress.
Reduce screen time
If you have trouble falling asleep early, try reducing your screen time in the evening. An hour or two before bed, stop watching TV, working on your laptop, or looking at your phone. The blue light that comes from electrical devices messes with your internal clock and makes you not want to sleep at the right time. You should read a book, listen to relaxing music, or just relax instead.
A lot of modern stress comes from social media. On almost all social media platforms, you’re constantly confronted with stressful content. This is especially true when major political events are coming up.
Regularly turn off your smartphone for a while and take breaks from news updates, the latest social media trend and all those ads for things you absolutely must have. Consider taking an online sabbatical for a week or more if your job doesn’t require you to keep up with the latest status update from your friends and acquaintances. This will help you reduce modern internet stress.
Instead of focusing too much on social media, get back to interacting with people as you can in your country. During the pandemic, the focus of humanity was on social distance and exchange via chatting and video calling. In the process, much of value, emotion, and human interaction fell by the wayside. Human contact is simply irreplaceable to us as social beings.
Reduce your time on social media accounts and meet more with friends and family instead. It’s more fun and more personally rewarding than screen or phone exchanges.
Conclusion
There are many stressors in everyday life. If you are aware of these stressors, you can reduce your stress and live healthier. Modern technology has made life much more convenient, there is no doubt about that. But it also exposes you to additional stressors. Reduce your time on electrical devices and cultivate real, social contacts.