Quick Tips: How to Reduce Stress
Who you gonna call?
We’ve been through some stuff together, areweright? From garden variety grown-up stuff to a once-in-a-generation global pandemic, shit’s gotten extra real. So we’ve scoured the landscape to bring you some tips and tricks for reducing stress—no matter the source. We did a deep dive in the archives to bring our favorite coping strategies back to the fore, so you can start doing your best don’t worry, be happy dance ASAP.
Go from flight or fight to mighty might.
Strength & Conditioning Coach Joel Sanders devised this 21 day challenge to help you use breath, cold and movement to strengthen your super powers.
Ditch the digital mess.
Sure, the pings and dings are stressors in and of themselves, but our digital clutter adds to the pile. Professional Organizer Rachel Rosenthal gave us one of our most popular posts ever with her tidy up tips for your phone.
Put the calm in bloom.
A pandemic practice we haven’t said goodbye to? Flowering. We constantly revisit florist Meredith Wallace’s guide to making an arrangement from grocery store flowers.
Step into the situation room.
Once when dealing with a particularly stressful stretch in corporate life, we were reminded we need not face it alone. The solution? Build a cabinet. We told you how to construct your own collection of special advisors to help you to weather any storm.
Just breathe.
It seems somewhat silly that literally the first thing we learn to do eludes us later in life. We’ve been boning up on our breathing and have to say we probably underestimated its stress-reducing power when done right.
Plan backwards.
When it feels like it’s raining crises, it is easy to forget that we have some say-so on how things unfold. In those cases, it’s best to borrow from military planning. In times of uncertainty, planning forward is a fool’s errand. Instead, we start with setting an intention toward what we want, when—then work our way back with manageable steps and tangible actions that we control.
Buddy up.
We all know the specific stress that can come from less-than-fulfilling friendships, but the prospect of making new friends (at my age???) seems daunting. It doesn’t have to be, though, with this guide to forging new bonds as a grown-up.
Get some shut eye.
Nothing will add to your anxiety like missing those zzzzs. We asked Dr. Donn Posner how we can make our bedtime better.
