Life can be brilliant one moment only to become deeply stressful, upsetting, and difficult to wrap your head around the next. It’s no secret that all of us are prone to experience periods of despondency and uncertainty, and from time to time, things just go wrong.
Whether your job is weighing down on your more heavily than you’d like at the moment, or whether a personal drama between yourself and a relative or friend is reaching fever pitch, it’s very important to have a collection of skills and techniques at hand to remove yourself from the situation, calm down, and find your centre again.
Some of the most effective advice for reducing stress and improving your quality of life is pretty intuitive stuff, such as quitting smoking and limiting your drinking.
Specific pastimes and activities can, however, often play a major part in making you feel worlds better in a short span of time.
Here are some quick ways to get a break and improve your sense of well-being.
Go dancing
Dancing is a fantastic way of cutting loose and letting your hair down, because it not only blends social activity with physical exercise, but it does it all in a context that is naturally fun and uplifting, with catchy tunes coming along for the ride.
If you or one of your friends is getting married, you could consider signing up for nationwide hen party dance classes, and even if you don’t have an event immediately looming large on the horizon, taking dance classes can be a great way of learning a valuable life skill, while also distracting yourself from just about everything else in your life, and having fun in the process.
Dance — whether it’s ballroom dancing, a Zumba class, or anything else — can truly nourish the soul, and get you fit at the same time.
Start feeding yourself and resting properly
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of nutrition and sleep in creating a feeling of enduring well-being and happiness in your life, not to mention being infinitely healthier at the same time.
Many restrictive diets ruin people’s health in the long term, despite their ambitious health claims.
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment conducted during WW2 found that even relatively moderate calorie restriction (by modern diet standards) over a period of 6 months caused profound mood and health issues.
Likewise, researchers have found that getting even slightly too little sleep for a week can ruin your blood sugar control to the point where you’d be classified as pre-diabetic.
Sleep a lot. Eat nourishing food whenever you feel hungry, and keep eating until you’re satisfied.
Spend a weekend away, camping somewhere beautiful
“Forest bathing” is currently a popular health and wellness trend in Japan. The basic idea is that by immersing yourself in a forested setting, you dramatically improve your mood and health.
This is something that research keeps finding evidence for, with time spent in nature associated with overall improved health markers, and vastly improved mood.
Go camping somewhere beautiful for a weekend. Let the worries of life wash away, and take a deep breath of that fresh country air.
