It’s not for nothing Russian’s say that Monday is a difficult day. Most of us think that the weekend was too short and we didn’t have enough time not just to relax, but to finish work we had to do around the house. We wake up on Monday morning hating the alarm, hating our jobs, hating the world a little bit. It’s great if we had a good weekend that filled us with positive emotions. But what if something happened on the weekend that pushed you out of your equilibrium? Then you come to work and find out that on top of all the work that was left over from last week, there is an urgent project that’s due in 10 hours and a last minute meeting that will take at least 2 hours of your already non-existent day.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about stress. We all feel it, some more often than others. Some of us know how to deal with it and stay productive. Others struggle, day after day, with work related, family related, life related stresses, becoming less productive and more stressed. This eventually leads to health problems, which stress us out even more. Today, we will give you some pointers on how to deal with this stress. We are not going to try to tell you the utopian ‘Take a vacation!’ Who has the time?
All of the tips below will take you 5 minutes and are guaranteed to lower the level of stress you are feeling at any specific moment.
- Go for a brisk walk outside. Even if you can only go out for 5 minutes and take a lap or two around your office/home, it will get your mind from the source of the stress you are feeling and calm you down. This time will also help you collect your thoughts and shed light on the problem from another side, opening possibilities you couldn’t see before.
- Read something funny, not serious, and not related to your problem. Research has proven that reading is the number 1 way to take stress off – 67% of your stress is guaranteed to go away during reading! According to scientists, nothing compares to reading when it comes to taking stress off, not even alcohol and yoga! Again, if you only have 5 minutes, either read a funny article in a magazine, or start on some paperback love romance. You won’t need much attention for anything like that and whether you finish, or not is not going to be the point. The point is to get your mind off of things.
- Meditate. This one may be the hardest for some, as getting all thoughts out of your head only sounds easy. Not all of us can do this. During meditation, try a deep breathing technique (those who do yoga, know about this technique). Deep breathing helps your body relax and makes your brain concentrate on the breathing, not anything else.
- Drink some herbal tea. Caffeine is the worst enemy during stress, so drinking coffee or black tea will only do more harm. Make yourself some chamomile tea, for example, enjoy a cup and you will feel a lot better. Russian Shoppe can offer a great variety of herbal teas for your stressful days at home and office.
- Hit a pillow. This is the most primitive, but very effective way of dealing with stress. You can technically hit anything, but a pillow will do less damage to your body parts. If you are home, hit a pillow several times and see the wonders it will do. If you have a lot of stress at work, you may want to bring something soft to get your anger out every once in a while. Starting boxing or kickboxing is another option. You can do that at lunch or right after work, and imagine that the punching bag is your stress embodied into something tangible.
Though we hope that your life is a nice picnic on a sunny day on a daffodil meadow, if you ever encounter anything stressful, try any of the 5 pointers above and you’ll be surprised how quickly your problems will seem very much solvable and not that big. Enjoy yourself!
