Saturday, November 17, 2012

Stress Reliever List: 25 More Stress Relievers to Try

http://stress.about.com/od/tensiontamers/a/stress_reliever.htm

Need to relax and de-stress? This list is bound to have the perfect stress reliever for you:
  • Overcome Perfectionism: If you’re a perfectionist, you’re most likely causing unnecessary stress to yourself and those around you. This self test assesses your level of perfectionism, and provides resources for change.
  • Overcome Type A Traits: Type A personality traits also have stress inducing effects. Test your ‘Type A’-ness, and find resources for handling these traits in yourself and others.
  • Play Music During Your Commute: Music has great stress relief and health benefits. Try this, and find additional ways to use music as a daily stress reliever.
  • Get a Massage: Massage can be a great way to relieve tension in your body, and a self-massager gives you an inexpensive massage any time. Read more about this and other stress relief gifts and tools.
  • Take a Quiet Day: If you don’t have the money or time for a vacation, taking a quiet day is a great way to get a break. Here are some more ideas for stress reliever mini-vacations.
  • Goof Off A Little With how busy we all are these days, it can pay off to take a little time to do nothing. We all instinctively knew this as children, but somewhere along the way got too busy to let our inner children come out to play. Read more about this and other stress relievers from childhood.
  • Laugh With Your Friends: Laughter has significant stress management and even health benefits. Learn more about the stress relief benefits of laughter and find ways to work this great stress reliever into your day.
  • Throw a Small Party: Social support works wonders on a person’s stress level, and each type of friend is important. Throw a small party (as opposed to a large, unruly one, or no party at all) and celebrate your most important friends and the roles they play in your life. You’ll strengthen your social bonds and relieve the stress you may be feeling.
  • Have a Spa Night At Home: Taking time to pamper yourself is an important but often-forgotten stress reliever. An inexpensive way to do this is to have a spa night at home. Learn how now.
  • Go on a News Fast: News is important, but what we hear in the news these days can be highly stressful. Taking one day a week to shun the news from t.v., the internet, and other sources can do us good. If anything really important is happening, you’ll hear about it, but the peace and quiet can be good for your stress levels.
  • Read a Book: Getting lost in a good book can be a great way to relieve stress. Here’s a selection of good fiction and non-fiction that can be especially helpful for stress relief.
  • Daydream: Give your mind a break and let it wander for a while. On purpose. Imagine yourself swimming in a pool of chocolate, floating on the moon, or winning a Nobel prize and going to Disneyland to celebrate. You’ll feel less stressed in just a few minutes!
  • 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!
  • Here are more effective stress reliever ideas for all lifestyles:
    • 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.
    • Get Moving! Getting exercise is a great way to take care of yourself and your health. Here are 10 more great self care strategies 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 learningopportunities.
    • 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.

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