With the arrival of each academic year, students are greeted with seemingly endless piles of work, hectic schedules, and restless nights. It is easy to become stressed and overwhelmed about everything in life under these circumstances, which not only hinders us from being productive, but also worsens our mental health. This is not desirable for any of us. When we realise we have fallen into such circumstances, we would try to alleviate the stress that is on our minds. Destressing sounds simple on paper but is actually much easier said than done. Often, we don’t know where or how to start, so I’ll be sharing 4 healthy ways to destress with you, so that you can have some direction when you need to destress.
1 . Be active
Doing exercise, whether it be jogging on the streets or dancing in your room, is a good form of stress relieving. When we exercise, our brain releases something called dopamine, which is a hormone that helps us feel pleasure and happiness. With this, our immediate stress can be temporarily put in the back of our minds, allowing us to think more clearly and become relaxed. Besides, exercising is also very beneficial for our physical health, which is why I'd recommend this as a way to destress.
2 . Listen to music you like
To me, music is something that is irreplaceable. It's an universal language which conveys more than just words alone can do. Whenever I listen to a song I like, a warmth fills my heart as a smile grows on my face, removing myself from the world I live in and encasing me within the melody. The act of destressing is to relieve pressure on our minds, so what better solution to this than listening to a song we like? As I know from my previous experiences, songs I like tend to absolve me of all stress in those moments, making it a pretty good stress reliever for me. Alternatively, listening to calming music can also relax our minds, so I’d say it is a good method of destressing.
3 . Meditation
One common way people like to destress is through meditation. Just taking a few minutes out of our hectic days is enough for this simple activity, which can be conveniently done in the comfort of our own home. When we take the time to take a deep breath and calm ourselves, we place more focus in the current moment rather than hypothetical future problems. In this practice of mindfulness, we are momentarily isolating ourselves from our lives and the world around us, placing more importance on our state of mind and reducing the negative emotions we’re feeling. The more we meditate, the easier it is to retain this calm state of mind in our daily lives, which reduces the degree of stress we feel. So not only is meditation good for immediate stress relief, but also for long term stress management!
4 . Make a to-do list
When there is a lot on our plate, we often get stressed about unfinished work and multiple upcoming deadlines. When we try to manage everything at once, it is easy to spread ourselves thin, resulting in a lot of incomplete or mediocre work. The poor quality of work urges us to spend more time on them, adding to our workload and ultimately creating more stress than what we had initially. Making a to-do list when we feel overwhelmed with work can not only lay everything out clearly, but also allow us to prioritize certain tasks over others, thus allowing us to manage our time more efficiently. This drastically decreases the stress we feel, since we now have a newfound sense of direction and clarity, and also tackles the problem of work at the same time, so this is definitely something worth trying the next time you have a lot of work on your hands.
Being stressed fills us up with anxiety, which can disturb our thinking when we are trying to tackle work, which is not productive in the slightest. Although we might try to avoid having stress in the first place, it is something that is easier said than done. If we do become overwhelmed, we should try to alleviate the pressure instead of wallowing in it and falling into a spiral of stress. Learning how to healthily deal with stress can teach us many skills on management, how to properly deal with emotions, and ultimately build up our resilience, better equipping us for the future ahead of us. I hope this article was informative and I wish you all the best with this academic year!
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