Stress is a natural part of life, and it can be beneficial in appropriate doses. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t minimize its impact on your mood or learn how to handle it better.
Find your inner zen master with these five strategies for eliminating unnecessary stress from your life:
- Invest in Good Help
Can you afford a cleaner? Could you pay a professional declutterer to sort out your house? How about hiring a tax return accountant to get your finances in order? If you have the money to put towards services that can take some of the stress out of your life, it’s one of the best investments you will ever make. This is especially true if things like cleaning or taxes have been weighing on your mind and interfering with your sleep or comfort levels.
- Discover Swedish Death Cleaning
Swedish Death Cleaning is where you sort out your affairs as though death is imminent.
It eliminates stress by forcing you to confront areas of life you have been avoiding. Whether it’s digital files, physical belongings, or relationships that do not serve you, you’re bound to have a few things that need sorting out.
If you knew you were going to pass away soon, would you stay in conflict with your family? Would you keep making an effort with that toxic friend? Would you stay in a job that sucks away your soul every day?
Cleaning up your life as though death is imminent can be confronting, but ultimately, it’s a cleansing, thoughtful, transformative process.
- Learn to Say No
Learning to say no gives you an instant way to stop stressful factors from becoming an issue. Saying no to an invite you don’t want, saying no to extra jobs you can’t take on – that one little word can free you from some massive burdens. It’s even worth learning how to say no to yourself when you try to force extra tasks into an already jam-packed day.
There are plenty of science-approved strategies for learning to say no, and most researchers agree that mastering this skill is highly beneficial.
- Pay Attention
Stress, when allowed to continue without any control, can cause scary physical issues like heart problems and breathing difficulties. When we experience stress so often that it impacts our bodies in these ways, we’ve usually gotten so used to it that we struggle to see the root cause.
One stressful situation rolls into another one, and then something you can usually cope with feels overwhelming until you break apart inside, feeling like life is just too much. If this all sounds familiar, it’s time to sit down and take stock of your lifestyle.
What are the true sources of continual stress in your life? Which areas do you actively avoid because they are too hard to face? Identify the core causes of stress so you concentrate your energy on fixing the areas that impact you the most.
- Learn Health Coping Mechanisms
Even after working through the tips above, stress will still pop up in your life. For that reason, it helps to have an armory of skills you can draw on to cope with it when it arises. You can try meditation, yoga, getting out in nature, and expressing yourself through art. These skills and tools will help you prevent stress from escalating to a level where it harms your life.
Stress less with the tips above for a better life that’s much more zen. You deserve to feel calm, content, and in control.
