We all have those moments in our life where we feel completely stressed out about our lives, and that can make us feel a little down about oursleves, causing the stress cycle to continue. Don’t worry though because here are some easy tips to eliminate stress from your life. Stress that might be coming from a seemingly harmless source!
1. Change your greeting.
A standard greeting when we meet up with friends is, “Hi. Wow you look cute today!” We may think we are paying them a compliment, but the problem is that the focus is instantly put on the outward appearance. Likewise, we’ve all been greeted with the opposite reaction, “You look so tired today, are you okay?” Your response is that you’re fine, you just decided to skip makeup this morning. This kind of greeting pattern can start to make you feel anxious and self conscious because you feel you are always being judged. We may not realize that this is creating stress. Instead, you can simply ask someone how they are doing, or even just greet them by saying how glad you are to see them.
2. Put the magazine down.
When you flip through a beauty magazine you may think you are giving yourself time to relax, but it can end up making you feel worse and more stressed out. Seeing only certain images of beauty reinforces a feeling of incompleteness. When you read a book instead, your creativity has a chance to come into play and there is no right or wrong answer when you picture a character in your head. Magazines aim to sell, so they plant more problems in your mind so that they can later sell you products to “fix” you. To really de-stress, opt for a book that focuses on strong characters rather than still images.
3. Change your app habits.
For almost everything there’s “an app for that”. This means we can easily access websites and clothing and beauty sites on our phones. Most of us play around on our phones while we wait in line or ride the bus, but surfing sites that focus on material things is not doing us any favors. While those game apps can be addicting, it’s better to focus on building game skills than mindlessly browsing online shopping. Quiz apps wake up your brain and can make you work towards a goal rather than moan over what you can’t buy.
4. Pay it forward.
Nothing feels better than making someone else feel better. Make it a point to do something nice or helpful for one person each day. It can be someting like leaving change in a vending machine on campus, or helping out a friend and babysitting for free. Whatever you decide, it is unlikely that you will feel worse afterward. Making someone else smile can lower your own stress level and put you in a positive mood where you feel like you can accomplish more.
5. Do your part.
Make your enviornment a clean one. Follow easy rules like always recycle, turn off your lights when you don’t need them or even decide to take a shorter shower. By doing your part in keeping your immediate living space envirornmentally friendly, you might be surprised how much better you feel. Look at your bad enviornmental habits and make the change. On averge it only takes 21 days to make a new habit. Why not make it a habit to be clean and de-stressed?