From mindful eating to seeing the benefits of a stressful situation, here are six things you can practice every day.
Change your diet
Remember what you ate during the day today? Perhaps the reason for not feeling well is corny in food. 80-90% of the serotonin produced in the body is in the intestines. This "hormone of happiness" is directly responsible for our mood and libido. The lack of serotonin immediately affects the state of health. The solution is simple: we exclude alcohol and sugar and add colored vegetables, cheese, red fish, pine nuts, cottage cheese (all of them are rich in tryptophan, an amino acid that stimulates the production of serotonin).
It is also not worth consoling yourself with food - in this case, guilt cannot be avoided. Plus, a sweet mid-day snack will bring relaxation, but only for a couple of minutes. Plan your diet in advance: order lunch before 11 a.m. (without being hungry, you will choose a healthier option), and eat in a relaxed atmosphere, disconnected from work processes (not sitting in front of the monitor).
Visualize the good
This technique is offered to their patients by psychologists and psychotherapists. Close your eyes and imagine someone or something that makes you smile. Focus on that person, place, or event and visualize the entire story in great detail. And then notice to yourself how these thoughts resonate in your body.
Stay in this position for a few minutes, feeling a change in your body.
If you do yoga, then you experience similar sensations at the end of the practice, doing savasana. The exercise is great to practice in the middle of the day to switch from negative thoughts to positive ones.
See stress positively
We know that stress is not always a bad story. Scientists have long identified the concept of eustress, which we talked about in more detail here. Eustress is a positive reaction to a difficult, at first glance, situation. Here are a couple of examples: first day at a new job, first date, getting a driver's license. All of this seems awful and unpleasant until you allow yourself to think otherwise. Excitement, uncertainty, perhaps fear now, and an hour later - pride in yourself and the feeling of a great job done. If you continue to think about such stress in a negative way, it can actually work against you.
Try art therapy
This is a whole therapeutic area that helps people cope with addictions and depression. In some states of the USA, for example, it is stated at the legislative level that only certified specialists can engage in art therapy. They also advise using banal coloring pages or painting if you feel a little stress or anxiety. In the process of drawing, your mind and body are involved, this is a kind of entry point into art, when you go beyond the boundaries of ordinary verbalization and present your experiences in a more creative way. As a result, you channel destructive emotions into something positive and adaptive.
Learn to identify stress in time and allow yourself a well-deserved rest
“I didn’t do so much to get very tired”, “I won’t tell him about my problems - why burden a person”, “I will spend an hour or two cleaning the house, but save money on cleaning” - phrases familiar to you? They are all about chronic stress, which is much more destructive than acute stress (when we react to a situation in the moment, and do not postpone the experience for later).
It's okay to allow yourself to rest, delegate work, talk about your experiences, and appreciate what you are doing without regard for the success of others. Small tokens in the form of a self-purchased bouquet of flowers, a warm bath with salt (they wrote about the best means here), walking for pleasure and without haste and taking a comfortable taxi instead of a stuffy metro, when you realize that you are tired - all this is about self-love and the search for that very resource state in which there is no (or minimum) acute stress!
Sleep in comfort
Time in bed is almost the only way the body can recover from stress in a day. If you are very tired, experts advise sleeping with a mask and under a thick, even heavy blanket. A mask reduces the amount of light, while a blanket increases a sense of calm and security. It's kind of a giant cozy hug.
