Five Ways To Make Your Life Happier and Less Stressful

Happy at Work

So you have some stress in your life huh? Maybe you’re unhappy as well? Well, you’ve come to the right place. I am no doctor or therapist but I do know that stress is a dangerous disease that can eat away at you. Stress can hurt you physically and emotionally as well as mentally. Stress can weaken your immune system or cause you trouble controlling your emotions.

5. Get Your Exercise On: Whoa, I know you came here expecting to see things like pizza and ice cream, cause what can make you happier than that? Now you see the first thing being exercise and nearly sprain your wrist going for that X on the top right corner. Bare with me for a moment and trust me on this. I know that exercise seems like a time consuming chore hard to fit into our daily lives but it is scientifically proven to have a strong influence in our happiness. There is a simple to do seven minute workout that is proven effective by science. You know, people in lab coats who are holding test tubes up while strongly inspecting them. So if you can’t find seven minutes in your day then you better be curing something real deadly. Exercise helps by releasing endorphins and other chemicals that keep our brain happy and our bodies feeling good. Here is a video showing the seven minute workout and how simple it is to do.

4. Find Your Sleep Time: Ahhhh, that’s more like it right? I can almost hear the smiles on your faces. Yes, I hear smiles. Lack of sleep is one of the easiest ways to add stress to your life. Why? Well, different parts of our brain handle good and bad memories. Studies have shown that lacking sleep can impact the part of your brain that handles the good memories harder than it does the one that takes care of the bad ones. So your negativity meter rises and you grasp more onto negative things than positive. That’s not all though because finding your sleep time is about figuring out how many hours do you need to sleep. I used to think you needed at least 8 hours of sleep to be healthy and I’m pretty sure most of us remember that number 8 getting flooded into our brains growing up. No, you don’t need 8 or more hours of sleep, studies show that those with 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep live the longest with happier lives while being most productive. Any less than 6.5 and you may find yourself sleep deprived. Being sleep deprived doesn’t mean that you can’t work as hard or be as productive as someone with their optimal sleeping time. You certainly may be able to do better than someone with a good night of sleep. What happens when you lack sleep is that your brain has a slightly harder time trying to refocus as when you are rested. If you are rested, your brain can reboot and get your attention back on the task quicker than someone sleep deprived. This all lends itself to making your life more stressful. Maybe you’re a 6.5 hour sleeper. Maybe you’re a 7.5. Maybe you’re somewhere in between. Find your sleep time.

3. Plan Vacations:

Chilling at the Louvre with Mona Lisa

Look, this kind of goes without saying right? Vacations= bye bye stress. I mean of course vacations will make you happy but there’s more to it than just the actual vacations. Studies show that people get a boost of endorphins from just thinking about vacation. The planning is also something that leads to happiness. You may be able to get a boost of happy juice pumped into your brain by just thinking of the cool ocean breeze when you hit that beach or booking your flight that you have been researching. Your endorphins kick it up a notch as you’re planning your activities in anticipation of your trip. Once you return from your vacation your levels go back to normal which may actually make you feel depressed since you were used to that happy-high you were on for the past month. So the question is, how do you combat this drop? You can plan little trips throughout the year so that you’re always anticipating the next thing. It doesn’t have to be a trip to the other side of the world, it doesn’t even have to be a trip at all. You can make it a small local weekend getaway or even just a get together with friends and family. Having kids can complicate things but having outings with your family to fun places can really be a positive stress-lifting experience for you and your family.

2. Take Breaks to Meditate, Like a BOSS:
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Meditate

Meditation sounds like some new aged hippy stuff right? Well, listen up, it works. It’s proven that meditation can help your brain shut off and relax when overwhelmed. Being a writer, I practice this method frequently and I feel it works wonders. There are times that you are waist-deep in the proverbial mud of a task and the stress is beginning to effect your thinking. For me, maybe I can’t find the right sentence to bridge two topics together or perhaps there’s a plot hole in something and I can’t figure out how to fix it. I would decide to stop everything I am doing and just clear my mind. Stop thinking of the problem at hand and just breathe. Maybe think about something relaxing like a rain storm or a waterfall. I allow my brain to clear out the clutter. It’s easy to get wrapped up into what you’re doing and feeling that you can’t step away even for a moment. I urge you to reconsider. Studies show that you can actually change your brains functioning with simple meditation. It’s like hitting the restart button on your computer when it’s getting slow, except your brain is a lot more complicated than your Dell. The process can actually relieve stress and allow you to be happier by giving your brain some time to be free of work. You may even find answers a lot easier when you come back to the task.

1. Do What You Love So You Can Be This Happy:

2015-02-15 17.52.52

The average person will spend about a quarter of a century of their lifetime sleeping. Coming in second though is work. In a lifetime the average person will spend over 99,000 hours of total time working. That’s more than 11 years time. Do you want to spend that time being stressed and angry or do you want to enjoy what you do for a living? Some people just get comfortable working through life even though they aren’t happy doing it. They’re just stuck in the safety of that pocket with no motivation or desire to leave it. Maybe you want to do something more but you’re afraid to fail. It’s normal to feel that way. We all fear failure but courage is about facing that fear and pushing on anyway, fear or no. That doesn’t mean for you to quit your job and live on the streets, unless that will truly make you happy which then I would withdrawal by objection. I’ll leave you with this inspirational quote from the late Steve Jobs.

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” ―Steve Jobs

Take that class you wanted to take. Go to school and try to work your way to a career that you will be happy in. It’s better than spending 99,000 hours of your life miserable and stressed out. That’s a LOOOOOONG time of your life spent negatively. Like I love to write, so I write and it makes me happy. If you love my writing, that makes me even happier. So please spread and share the love of my words so that my happiness levels overflow.

 

 

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