Take the Stress Quiz and rule out if you are stressed or not.

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1. Avoid this decided stressor. You can’t let this stressor take hold of you and alter you forever.
2. Begin to reframe these stressors and problems. Remember that sometimes these stressors are just a part of your personal perspective.
3. Try to say no more often.
4. Give up tasks to others and begin to delegate.

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1. Clean up your life. If you live and work in a messy environment, you are asking for stress to take hold of you.
2. Prepare yourself for the day ahead and take your morning a little bit more slowly.
3. Listen to calm music.
4. Look to aromatherapy. The scent of both oranges and lavender has been shown to reduce anxiety and stress levels.
5. Alter your actual environment. If you can’t study or work in your specific office, try to relocate to a park or a coffee shop.

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1. Try taking a long, warm bath. A warm bubble bath will relax your already tense muscles and allow you to soothe yourself.
2. Look to one of your past favorite hobbies to calm yourself.
3. Alternately, find a new hobby to fill your life.
4. Look to the natural world and go for a walk in the sunshine. Sunlight natural dissipates your depression.
5. Try to laugh a little bit more. Laughter is the most natural cure there is.
6. Relax with a cup of tea. People who regularly drink tea have been shown to have lower levels of stress.
7. Go get a massage. When you get a massage, you are releasing feel-good, anti-stress hormones into your body.

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Eat the necessary healthful foods.

Some food known for their stress reducing qualities

1. Avocado
2. Asparagus
3. Blueberries
4. Oatmeal
5. Organic beef
6. Oranges
7. Walnuts
8. Cashew
9. Chamomile tea
10. Garlic

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Find daily exercise in your schedule.

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Begin to focus on your sleep schedule. Oftentimes, people skip out on sleep when they’re too stressed to do anything else.

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Begin to write in a journal. Simply writing out your stressful feelings from the day can help eliminate your stress and help you move forward from your past.

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Find the benefits of your relationship. If you are currently in a relationship with someone, look to kissing, sex, and cuddling for a hormone called oxytocin.

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Look to reduce stress in spiritual endeavors. People who participate in religion have been shown to have lower levels of stress.

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Try to calm your anxious thoughts. If you’re stressed out, try to stop thinking and repeat a “mantra” or a calming word.

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Accept yourself for who you are and try to feel good about yourself.

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1. Guided Meditation. Guided meditation can help you formulate mental images of various situations or places that your brain perceives as relaxing.
2. Mindfulness Meditation. Mindfulness meditation is based on holding greater feelings of mindfulness and understanding of the present moment.
3. Qi Gong. Qi Gong is the combination of physical movement, breathing, meditation, and relaxation. This stems from ancient Chinese medical practices.
4. Mantra Meditation. Mantra Meditation utilizes a single thought, word, or phrase in order to distract you from your racing thoughts or interior stress. Think of a word or phrase that initiates a sense of peace in you, and say the word over and over in order to distract yourself. Try: “Life is beautiful,” or “Peace.”
5. Tai chi. Tai chi also stems from ancient Chinese practices. You utilize postures or movements slowly and fluidly while also breathing deeply.
6.  Yoga. When you perform yoga in order to de-stress, you are performing a whole range of postures and exercises to yield a stress-free mind.

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NLP states that you continually make “anchors” and associations between your emotional state and your various sensors: what you see, what you feel, and what you hear.

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Future pacing allows you to imagine a future stressful situation and see if your anchoring and meditation have worked to de-stress you. Imagine a stressful situation that usually ruins your day.

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The NLP swish pattern is utilized to disrupt your negative patterns of thought. Imagine something, for example, that is associated with your stressful behaviors. Imagine you pulling your hand over your hair, like you might do when you’re stressed out. Imagine yourself sweating. Imagine yourself waving your hands around in a panicked way.

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During NLP reframing, you can begin to alter how you actually perceive an event and therefore change the meaning. As aforementioned, the way you perceive your world is the meaning of your world: it is your map. During reframing, you can alter your meaning of the world and therefore alter the way you act in that world. This involves the following six-step reframe.

1. Identify something you would rather not feel. In this case, identify your stress and your stressor. How do you act when you’re stressed? How do you feel?

2. Try to “speak” to the part of your brain that forces you to feel that way and act the way you do. Ask the part of your brain if it can communicate with you directly.

3. Ask this part of your brain what it wants when it’s forcing you to be stressed and alienated. Recognize what the part of the brain wants versus how it’s making you feel. This unconscious part of your brain has been attempting to help you; however, it’s not making you feel very good. Do not shame this part of your brain. Try to understand what it’s attempting to create in you.

4. Next, ask this part of your brain to create three other ways to achieve this outcome without making you feel so bad.

5. Ask this part of your brain to consider these three new choices and decide if they’re acceptable. Negotiate with the brain.

6. Check with other parts of your brain and body in order to make sure every part of you is okay with the new configurations.

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