- Get A Hug From a Loved One: Remember when you were little and a hug from Mommy or Daddy would fix it all? Hugs and other forms of social support can still make a big difference.
- Have a Pajama Day: Take a full day (a day that you have off from work) and stay in your jammies. Relax, stay comfortable, and do what you want. It’ll feel like a mini-vacation and you won’t even have to leave the house!
- Develop a Positive Self Talk Habit: We often don’t realize how much our thoughts color our world, but the impact of self talk is significant and pervasive. Developing a more positive style of self talk can be a minor change that has a major impact. It’s never too late to change.
- Eat To The Tune of Classical Music: Music can slow down your system and aid digestion. Learn more about the benefits of music.
- Cultivate Mindfulness Worrying about the future or rehashing the past can really drain you in ways that you may not readily realize. Practice the art of ‘being in the now’, or learn another easy meditation technique. With practice, you should find you have much more energy to devote to what’s going on right now.
- Getting exercise is a great way to take care of yourself and your health. Here are 10 more great for stress management.
- Stop Self Sabotage: Are you your own worst enemy? If you’re sabotaging your own happiness and sense of peace (either consciously or unconsciously), now’s the time to stop. Here’s help with stopping self sabotage.
- Play With Your Pets (or Someone Else’s): Pets carry great stress management and health benefits. Whether you’re stroking a cat, tossing a Frisbee to a dog, or staring at the inhabitants of a fish tank, you can lower your blood pressure and your stress level pretty quickly!
- Create Artwork: Getting in touch with your creative side may have been easy for you during childhood, but if you’ve lost touch with your penchant for drawing, it’s not too late to pick it up again! Learn more about reducing stress with the therapeutic qualities of art.
- Post In The Forum: There are plenty of members and visitors populating the Stress Management Forum every week. You can join them and post questions and answers to stress-related problems. Open 24 hours!
- Take a Free E Course: Interested in learning to live a low-stress lifestyle with targeted weekly lessons sent straight to your in-box? Find out about this site’s free online learning opportunities.
- Participate in Fun Stress Polls: What stresses you the most? Do you exercise regularly? These stress polls are a fun way to see how other people live and view the world, and examine your own life and the role stress plays in it.
- Visualize Your Ideal Life—And Make It Happen! Guided imagery, self- hypnosis and visualizations can help you to visualize where you’d like to be in life, and then BE there. They’re also great ways to relieve stress—now, and in the future.
Additional Stress Relievers To Enhance Your LifeMore Great Stress Reliever Ideas
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com
Updated: November 08, 2007
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
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