Health

Top 4 Tips to Manage and Reduce Stress

Stress can permeate into every aspect of your life, from your mood to your diet and even your sleeping habits. When you’re stressed, you’re not performing at your best; pressures from work, home life, social expectations, and other commitments can leave you feeling tense, strained, and overwhelmed. In order to get back on track, check out this list where you’ll find everything you need to balance your mind, body, and spirit. 

Tip 1: Try Aromatherapy

Your sense of smell is the most grounding of all your body’s senses and also the one most closely related to memory. If you’ve ever caught a whiff of something that takes you back to a specific feeling, time period, or memory, you’ve experienced this phenomenon. Now it’s time to take that idea and use it to help manage your stress.

Using essential oils is an efficient and highly effective way to promote peace and calm in your environment. Grab a diffuser and load it with some of the best scents known to tackle stress and promote calm. Lavender, chamomile, lemon balm, sandalwood, and mint are all excellent choices that will clear your mind and melt your tension away. Young Living Essential Oils offers all of these oils and more. They also offer specific blends to invoke feelings of peace and happiness, such as their Harmony and Gratitude blends. 

If you want to pass your newfound peace to others, consider donating to the Young Living Foundation, which pledges to “nurture potential, rescue the harmed, and protect the earth.” 100% of your donation benefits those in need–you can sponsor a student, help victims of abuse, and positively impact the environment. 

Tip 2: Journal Daily 

Try to write in a journal every night (or every morning) and unload your stressors and anxieties onto the paper. Not only does this physically release the thoughts from your body, but actually visualizing your thoughts and worries outside of your head can help you see them in a different light.

If you’re worried about something specific, try to imagine the absolute worst-case scenario and write it down. You can then work on potential solutions right in your journal and make a pro and con list for each. Just as getting the stress out on paper can help you to reframe it, you can also work on solutions and visualize them in the same way. 

Tip 3: Explore Meditation or Yoga

Meditation and yoga are known to be very effective stress busters for a very good reason–they really work. Both these practices are effective on their own, but they are very powerful when performed hand in hand. Meditation clears the racing thoughts in your mind and connects you directly to a feeling of peace and harmony, while yoga helps you to focus on your breath-body connection.

Have you ever noticed that when you walk into a spa or yoga studio, there is usually a calming and relaxing scent in the air? If you really want to kick your meditation or yoga practice into high gear, grab your diffuser from Tip # 1, and diffuse your favorite essential oils during your sessions. The calming scents will further relax your mind (and body, too) while centering your thoughts. 

Tip 4: Take a Walk

Exercise can be a hugely beneficial tool to banish stress. Exercise is a known stress buster because it releases chemicals in your brain called endorphins, which give you the feeling of happiness and relaxation. You don’t have to go wild in the gym for hours a day but try to take a 30-minute walk several times a week to feel the benefits. 

For even more significant benefits, bring your partner or a friend; this way, you can talk out some of your concerns with someone you love and trust. Getting your problems out in the open (similar to the technique of journaling) helps you refocus and reframe the situations in your mind, and receiving advice from a trusted loved one is very helpful, too. 

Everyone suffers from periods of stress in their lives, but it doesn’t have to get you down. There are concrete ways to combat these feelings and rise above them. Exercise, journaling, meditation, yoga, and aromatherapy are all effective methods for taking back control and telling stress who’s boss. 

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