Madhurya
- Nov 5, 2021
- 8 min read

12 Ways to be less stressed.

Stress, anxiety, and depression have become common experiences for the majority of people right now. Especially the younger generation faces these issues quite commonly on a daily basis and many don't even realize going through these issues. We all live a fast-paced lifestyle, have unhealthy food habits, & take huge amounts of responsibilities on ourselves which are the leading causes for stress anxiety issues. One thing to know and understand is that these are quite common in today's world and they are nothing to be ashamed of. Many tend to hide these issues and feel insecure to talk to friends and family when they are facing these problems.

You can also check out the audio version below.

Here are 12 ways you can reduce your stress levels and lean towards leading a more happy and content life.

Stress is unavoidable

Know that stress is very common, in fact, 80-90% of us experience stress on some level in our day-to-day life.

Stress is something that we cannot avoid, it's a natural and completely normal reaction that human beings have when they cannot handle or deal with certain things.

Stress is caused by overworking yourself, worrying too much, thinking, and living inside your head too much. Giving yourself a unwantedly high number of tasks and responsibilities to deal with, all-cause both mental and physical stress on you and your mind. How we handle stress and deal with it becomes a key to resolving all this.

So the next time you're feeling stressed out, know that it's a very normal and natural reaction. Do not panic or be ashamed of being stressed.

Take a step back/slow down

The majority of us are dealing with a ton of responsibilities on a daily basis, and often get high when we accomplish our daily tasks.

One thing we fail to understand is that in order to feel the high of accomplishment, we often tend to overwork ourselves and add on more things to do. This is the major cause of stress nowadays. You need to slow down, relax and unwind from doing things, learn to delegate things to others, and let go of the need to do all things by yourself.

You need to slow down both mentally and physically, breathe, calm down, take things slowly, reduce your to-do list, and add relaxation as a major task to your daily to-do lists. You don't have to conquer the world in one single day, you can do it one day and one step at a time. Prioritize your peace of mind over getting the high of accomplishment.

Disconnect /detach

When I say disconnect, I mean to disconnect with your work, after you're done with your 9-5, set very strict boundaries at work, don't let work spill over to your personal life. And detach from the attachment of social media and the digital noise.

Detach from all the distractions for at least an hour every day and be with yourself and your thoughts, be with your family without any disturbance, spend time with your loved ones.

Spend time doing the things you love to do. Pick up a hobby. Do something that will help you wind down and detach from the rest of the world and help you destress. It can be art, swimming, playing a sport, talking to your loved ones, cracking up some jokes with your family, workout session, cooking, it can be anything.

Detach and disconnect from the noise of the world and de-stress your mind and refresh it.

Identify what is stressing you out

This plays a major role in helping you destress. Identifying what is causing your stress, can help you get a handle on it and solve the issue. Most of the time it's work-related stress, or can be tension at home, no matter what it is, try to identify the root cause of your stress and deal with it.

Eliminating the cause of stress is a huge win in dealing with reducing stress levels.

Regain control of your life

The majority of us let our work-life control our personal life, this leads to a sense of loss or failure and spirals down to feed our stress levels.

Learn to prioritize and introduce boundaries at your work, you can start by limiting your working hours to a particular time frame, this will create a sense of control over your life and your time.

Identifying each of these stress points and resolving them and regaining control of your life and being responsible for your life decisions help reduce stress levels and give you a sense of accomplishment and happiness.

Practice mindfulness

Procrastination is a major cause of stress. We often procrastinate till the last moment and then go into panic mode when we haven't gotten things done. Procrastination is the enemy of a stress-free lifestyle.

If you want to deal with stress levels in your life, the first thing to do would be to get your procrastination under control. Having procrastination under control will lead to less last-minute work or tasks and less burden on your mind and body to get things done.

Practice being mindful when you're doing certain tasks, being mindful of what you're doing will help in reducing duplication of the effort and fewer errors and will in turn lead to you not repeating the tasks. This will save a lot of time and effort and will help in reducing anxiety and panic and lessen your mental burden as well.

Speak and discuss it

Being stressed in life is not an embarrassment, and people need to understand that this is a normal reaction. Many people tend to hide their issues with stress and anxiety because they are made to feel ashamed about it and made to feel that their issues aren't real.

Speaking to your friends and family will help a lot while dealing with stress and anxiety. You get a lot of relief when you talk to people who can understand your frustrations and just listen to you.

Venting out helps a lot. It helps bring out all your thoughts to the surface and reduces negative thoughts from spiraling inside your mind. Speaking out about your issues helps in getting a fresh perspective and will ease your mind a lot by just putting your thoughts out in the form of words.

The next time you're feeling really stressed out, just call up a friend or a family member and just vent it out. Sometimes that's all you need to get those vicious thoughts out of your head. This will help in turning off the noise inside your head and reduce negative self-talk.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

I know this sounds very cliche, but it's true. Most of the things we worry about and break our heads about so much, don't even matter after a day passes. Learn to differentiate between the big and small stuff and be choosy about the things you want to get stressed about.

Many of us get irritated by the tiniest of things and make a big deal about them and causing a lot of mental stress to ourselves. An hour later, you will only realize how stupid it was to even get stressed out about the thing you were feeling so Irritated about.

Pick your battles, the same way you pick your stress trigger. Do not let everything in your life control your mental well-being. You should be the one who controls what you give your mind space to.

Exercise regularly

Everybody has been preaching this. Physical health is as important as mental health. Leading an unhealthy and sedentary lifestyle is another major cause of stress and anxiety in our generation. We rarely get any exercise at all.

We are always glued to our phones, scrolling down social media pages without understanding the impact these habits have on our mental and physical well-being.

Exercise helps you cope with stress and prepares your body physically to deal with the stresses of daily life. Include a small exercise routine into your daily schedule.

You have to feel good inside out to feel better about yourself and have the physical strength to deal with the world and everything the world throws at you.

Set realistic goals and expectations

Having vague and insane unrealistic goals is the biggest cause of stress. we often get inspired by the overnight success stories that are displayed on social media and try to mimic everything they've done to achieve similar goals and hold ourselves accountable to high expectations.

With the number of unrealistic goals, we tend to underperform and fail at achieving these goals and kick ourselves and lose hope. Instead, try to have more realistic goals in life and give yourself realistic timelines and standards to live with.

Break down your goals into small everyday tasks and make them realistic and attractive for you to achieve.

For example, say your goal is to do 100 push-ups, doing 100 of them per day is an impossible task for a beginner, but doing 1 push-up per day is more realistic, achievable, and gives you a sense of accomplishment without putting the pressure of doing 100 pushups. This in turn will reduce your stress levels, which will improve your confidence and give you something to look forward to the next day.

Spend time with friends and family

No one knows you better than yourself and your friends and family. Spending a good amount of time and creating happy and good memories with them creates a healthy balance in your mind to help and reduce your stress levels.

Having a crappy day at work, and at the end of the day, you come home to your kids and family and your pet, will help you forget about your work at the door and give you something to be happy about and reduce stress levels.

Consciously choose to spend time with your parents, friends, and loved ones over binge-watching some TV show for the 100th time. The tv shows will be there forever but your loved ones will not.

Find out the right ways to tackle stress

If understanding and identifying what causes you stress is the first step to dealing with stress, then learning the right ways to jangle stress is the next step. There are many relaxation techniques that are proven to work wonders in reducing stress levels in human beings. There are both short-term and long-term techniques to deal with stress.

A few short-term techniques include meditation, muscle relaxation, focused breathing, taking a walk, hugging a loved one, aromatherapy, creating art. Anyone or more than one of them can work for you. It depends on your interests as well. Few enjoy taking a walk, but few dread the idea of walking alone in the street. You can pick and choose what technique works for you and implement them to better handle your stress levels.

A few long-term techniques are having a balanced diet, making time for leisure activities, practicing positive self-talk, doing yoga, expressing gratitude, exercising, organizing your life, connecting with people, working smarter and not harder.

Thank you for taking out time to read my blog. Know someone who would enjoy this blog? Share the blog with them and help us grow and share your feedback in the comments section.

Thank you for taking out time to read our blog as part of Stensor- The Mind Chapter. Do remember this is coming from our experiences only. This is purely from our journey towards mental health and wellbeing. We are Architects by profession, with a design initiative part of Stensor-The Design Chapter, where we help our audience/clients design beautiful living spaces to enhance their lifestyle. If you’re looking to revamp your spaces, feel free to reach out to us via email at contact@stensor.in or Click Here to know more.