Stress from school and academics is a very common shared experience that everyone has dealt with at some point. In college, this feeling is heightened with more rigorous and challenging courses, as well as dealing with midterms and finals season. Finding a healthy outlet for this stress is incredibly important, and staying active is the best way I have personally found to cope.
As a very goal-oriented individual, I’ve become a high achiever academically, where I will prioritize my schoolwork above all else, always. However, I’ve learned that balance is the most important thing when it comes to pursuing a healthy lifestyle. Moving my body in different ways has made such a huge difference in terms of my personal mental health and getting away from my books. Taking a break is so important because, at the end of the day, everything you do and the way that you take care of yourself factors into your mental health. Socializing and pursuing your interests and hobbies is equally as important, but a lot of it can be done together.
In order to ensure that I’m always staying active, my friends and the people around me help hold me accountable to the expectations I set for myself.. Creating a routine of going to the gym with my friends has positively impacted my approach to the gym, and has led me to truly enjoy working out. It’s one of the best parts of my day. Going to the gym, however, is understandably quite a large time commitment and can also be an environment in which people are not super comfortable in. Because of this, I constantly remind myself that the people around me are only focused on bettering themselves, the same way that I am. People are not going to be focused on what I’m doing, as opposed to focusing on their own workout. This made me gain so much confidence when I was first starting out. Now I can consistently go to the gym alone and use machines I was once too scared to try.
In regards to the time commitment, it’s completely understandable that on certain days you just don’t have an hour or two to go to the gym. Because of this, I’ve started running outside. It’s much easier to just step outside and start running for any amount of time rather than going all the way to the gym, working out, and then having to come back. Running, however, is a physical activity that many people resent and do not enjoy, though I’ve found that it truly is the best way to be active for a short period of time. It’s easy to start out with small goals, such as just running for five minutes, and then slowly increasing this to help build your stamina. Luckily, here in Boulder there are plenty of beautiful sights to see when running outside, making it much more enjoyable than running on a treadmill at the gym. On very busy days, taking just 10 minutes to go on a quick run with friends is something that I really look forward to now.
I was once in the position where I thought I was too busy to spend time exercising, however as I turned it into a priority, I’ve been able to find more time for it.