Among the lists of things that are common to humans, stress is one of them. We have all gotten stressed out at one point or the other; even babies feel stressed. I do three things to relieve stress depending on the nature of the stress, and the time and convenience I have.

Dancing

Dancing is one of things I do to relieve stress when I am at home, the location is convenient. It could be as simple as swaying to a slow rhythm or dancing to a pop song. I am not a very good dancer, but it doesn’t matter, I am not doing it to become a professional. I find dancing really helps relieve my stress. Sometimes I stand in front of a mirror to watch myself dance, I give myself little tasks like how many new dance moves I can invent or the different ways I could move my body. Seeing the different bizarre dance moves I come up with makes me laugh and before I know it, I’m not so stressed anymore. Other times, I play the song in my head without listening to it and just shake my body however I want, I make funny faces while dancing and just think of how people will laugh if they should see me right then, it makes me laugh even more. Dancing is a great remedy for relieving stress, especially if you are a goofy dancer like me, it works if you’re good at it too.

Talk it out…to myself

The other thing I do to relieve stress is talk about it to myself. Now I don’t want to look crazy talking to myself in public, not that I don’t do it sometimes, but I send myself text messages instead. Or write in the little notepad app on my android phone. It’s like having a friend you tell everything to the moment it happens, but when I actually think of ranting to my friend every single time I’m stressed, I also think of losing a friendship, so I rant to myself instead. I text myself short messages, it’s like checking on myself, I receive the messages and I respond. I use the notepad when I have a lot to say, I just keep on writing and writing till I’m sure I have fully vented. This works best when I’m on the train or in any sitting position, I just take out my phone and write about the issue. I also find it helps me put things into perspectives, for example I have found solutions to problems that give me stress by writing about it. Each thought I’m trying to write or text takes a while to process and within those little moments, things become clearer, it’s either I solve the problem or I just feel better about it. One day, I was on the train for two hours and I felt like I have really written a lot on my notepad app, so I decided to transfer it to Microsoft Word on my computer, just to see how much I had written, and I found that I had written five pages worth of materials about the situation, I was amazed and that alone made me feel great!

Daydream

Lastly, I daydream when I am stressed. I could be home or in public, but I am careful not to miss my stop while daydreaming on the train and I’m careful not to burn my food while daydreaming at home. There are other hazards I try to avoid while daydreaming, so generally, I daydream while laying on my bed or watching television, it’s safer that way. Usually, I would create characters my head and put them in my situation, rather than put myself in my daydreams. I would then think of happy stress-free ways in which my characters are resolving the situation or simply magically getting out of it. It makes me feel better to think of other people that might be facing the same issue, I don’t feel so alone and it’s just good to think of the fact that there might be a way for the issue to be resolved realistically or magically. Therefore daydreaming helps me in that sense. Sometimes I put myself in the daydreams and think of the farthest thing from the situation that is stressing me. This is what most people would do, it helps a lot too.

There are many unique ways in which people relieve stress, it might have become a habit or routine that we just do automatically without even thinking about it, but if we really think about it, we’d find we have our own individual ways of relieving stress. It could be universal too, it just means the method is so good, other people are using it.

How do you keep stress from getting you down?

Adrienne plays Words With Friends, Jonah plays pool, Ed works out (of course!), Harriet writes… share your favorite stress buster in the comments below or on the forum.