For most of my life, I have struggled with finding balance. I have always been someone who takes a lot on and strives to be perfect. Of course, these two habits can lead to great accomplishments, but they can also result in overwork, burnout, and exhaustion. In recent years, I have prioritized the search to find ways to achieve balance (or at least something akin to it). Listed below are a handful of practices that have helped me to disrupt the plague of stress and step outside of the frenzied flurry of constant activity.
1. Make plans with friends
I find that making plans with friends for a specific date and time is very helpful for forcing myself to get up from whatever I may be busy doing. It both gives me something to look forward to and makes me take a break at a specific, known time. Additionally, I’ve noticed that it pushes me to work at a quicker pace, as I know I have to stop working at a specific time, which can lead me to finish a task that I thought might take me all day in a shorter span.
2. Sign up for workout classes
Signing up for workout classes is similar to making plans with friends in that it compels you to cease work at a specific time, which isn’t necessarily the case if you simply say you’ll go to the gym at some vague point in the future. Additionally, as the Mayo Clinic writes in an article on movement and stress relief, exercise can help combat stress’s adverse effects while increasing endorphin levels. Personally, exercise is always my go-to when I desperately need to dispel anxiety; I invariably feel so much more relaxed after moving my body.
I’ve also found that doing group exercise classes is a great way to turn your brain off and reconnect with your body. One thing that I appreciate about TCU’s spin classes, in particular, is that the instructors always play a reflection song (a song during which everyone is given the space to do what they need to do, whether that’s rest, pedal at a slow or fast pace, workout arms with hand weights, or drink water, and to be proud of themselves for showing up and taking care of themselves).
3. Create manageable to-do lists
I have a tendency to look at everything that I need to do (not just for the current week but also for the weeks ahead) instead of simply focusing on the most pressing tasks. As you can imagine, this often causes me to worry about how much I have to do, which makes actually sitting down to complete my work difficult, producing a vicious cycle of unproductivity and stress. I have found that creating manageable to-do lists greatly helps to combat my tendency to take everything on at once, as it provides me with a concrete course of action and narrows my focus from whole weeks of work to just one day of work. There are many other advantages to this practice, several of which psychiatrist Carrie Barron, M.D., director of Creativity for Resilience at Dell Medical School and Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education at the University of Texas at Austin, enumerates in a Psychology Today article on list-making’s benefits.
4. Take breaks after completing tasks
This may sound obvious, but taking breaks can be more difficult than it sounds and even more difficult to do well. I frequently struggle with actually allowing myself to take a break, as I just want to keep working on my tasks so I can finish my assignments/studying more quickly; but oftentimes, this approach severely drains me, and through an ironic reversal, I end up taking longer to finish my work. However, I’ve also had trouble with utilizing my break time well. In my experience, I’ve found that watching a show or using my phone doesn’t refresh me but instead leaves me more drained. Replacing these activities with ones that boost my well-being, like exercising, practicing mindfulness, reading, and creating art, has dramatically improved the benefits I’ve reaped from taking breaks.
Zhanna Lyubykh, Assistant Professor of Management Organizational Studies in the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University and Duygu Biricik Gulseren, Assistant Professor in the School of Human Resource Management at York University, in a Harvard Business Review article titled “How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research,” discuss the proven benefits that result from taking breaks throughout the workday. They examine the noted improvements in people’s energy and focus when they pause during their workdays, rather than rigorously pushing through for hours on end, illustrating how non-stop work can lead to burnout and frustration, while breaks rejuvenate the body and mind. Further, the writers specify that the length and timing of breaks, the location in which breaks are taken (they state that taking breaks outside is substantially more beneficial than those taken inside), and the actions performed during breaks (exercise being particularly refreshing and using social media being detrimental) are crucial to a break’s effectiveness.
5. Sit outside and take a moment to just be
I always find being in nature very calming and stabilizing, even if I’m just sitting in my backyard. I love watching the small, cheeky birds and listening to their chatter, glimpsing small, brightly colored lizards as they dart across the yard, and laughing at the boldness of squirrels in their adventures; I love the feeling of the soft grass and the warm (perhaps too warm, at times) sun against my skin; and I love the quiet peacefulness of the clouds moving against the sky. Being outside energizes me; it reminds me of the air pumping in my lungs and the constant movement of life around me.
The benefits of spending time in nature are real, as Dr. Gregory Bratman, Associate Professor in the School of Environmental and Forrest Sciences at the University of Washington, Dr. J. Paul Hamilton, Assistant Professor in the Laureate Institute for Brain Research & Tulsa Community School of Medicine at the University of Tulsa, and Dr. Gretchen C. Daily, who, amongst many distinctions, is Bing Professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Biology and Director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University establish in their article, “The Impacts of Nature Experience on Human Cognitive Function and Mental Health,” published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. In their piece, they draw upon the vast corpus of literature on the relationship between health and our environments (particularly as we increasingly confine ourselves to urban locations and spend more time indoors), demonstrating the variety of theories propounded and studies conducted that strive to scientifically understand why humans, at large, feel more at ease in nature. Most notably, they discuss Roger Ulrich’s Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), which states that nature triggers an autonomic response, lowering stress levels, and Rachel and Stephen Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which posits that nature sharpens the mind’s ability to focus, both of which have been tested and proven to have merit.
However, nature has an impact beyond one that may be studied: for millennia, humans have admired nature’s beauty and power; religion, philosophy, literature, and art have recognized in it something awe-inspiring and wonderfully and terrifyingly vast, mighty, and eternal. It nourishes us, inspires us, and strikes fear in us, inducing a feeling aptly captured by the philosophical idea of the sublime.
To quote at length a beautiful section of the famed naturalist John Muir’s Our National Parks:
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature’s sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers here brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever playing. The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.”
6. Have a designated afternoon/evening off
Choose at least one afternoon or evening to completely take off. During this evening, you shouldn’t work, worry about what you have yet to complete, or even think about anything school-related. And don’t squander this evening by doomscrolling: make it count by doing something you enjoy. Read, go to an art museum, spend time with friends, try a new recipe, draw/paint, craft, or take a bath. Whatever you choose, do something restorative, something that will recharge you after a long week and restore the calm you may have lost due to the craziness of your classes. I’ve found that officially designating a particular afternoon as one I will take off no matter what is extremely helpful. By essentially scheduling my relaxation time, I’ve felt bound to a promise with myself, which has helped me to not feel guilty for taking a long break.
7. Take the time to cook
When I feel overwhelmed with work, I have a tendency to quickly throw a meal together that requires no cooking so that I don’t waste considerable time preparing and eating food. And I won’t say that I don’t still do this while I’m in the middle of a busy week, but I have noticed that carving the time out of my day to cook something for dinner helps me to relax in the evenings. In general, as I’ve mentioned, working with my hands and focusing on my physical movements permits me to turn off my constantly active brain and breathe, which provides me with more space to focus on nourishing my body. Further, a BBC Food article discussing the relationship between cooking and mental health states that there are a number of studies being conducted to analyze how the act of creating food may positively impact wellbeing.
Making meals can also be a great way to connect with your roommates; you can cook with them, which is always fun, or you can cook for them and eat as a group. Either way, food definitely possesses the power to bring people together, and I also love that cooking with others provides a creative, screen-free way to connect.
Closing
Overall, perhaps the best way to introduce balance in your life is to take the time to breathe and be human. I think nowadays, we oftentimes feel like we are in this big rush, this subconscious race to accomplish more, be more, and reach higher heights, and as a result, we put life on hold. We keep our heads down and tell ourselves that with one more push, we’ll break through the barrier standing between us and a new, better life, and that when we achieve that goal, we’ll finally rest and start living. But truthfully, there will always be a new finish line to cross, a new goal to chase after, resulting in a craze of constant activity. So, when will we start living? When will we allow ourselves to be human? I think that now more than ever — in an age of constant stimulation, isolation, and low patience — we have to make sure that we are actually living our lives, that we aren’t sleepwalking our way through them, as Dr. Holly Rogers, M.D., psychiatrist and co-founder of the Koru Mindfulness program, astutely writes in her mindfulness manual The Mindful Twenty-Something. We need to ensure that we’re not just watching events and people flit by as though we were passing them on a high-speed train. And introducing small, manageable practices like the ones I have mentioned above is a great way to take a step toward increasing awareness and calm and strengthening connections with others.