Tips For A Less Stressful Life

In order to live a less stressful life you need to practice self-care. Self-care includes listening to your body and making time for yourself among other things. I like to define self-care as taking good care of yourself so yourself can take better care of you - I promise it makes sense!

There are a few tips I would like to share with you on how I go about practicing self-care to lead a less stressful life and make my days a little easier. There's quite a lot of these tips out there but there's 4 in particular that I practice daily; the four I can attest to that I believe may positively affect your day-after-day:

Make Your Bed
I know you're probably thinking "how does that contribute to living a less stressful life?" A whole lot. When I don't make my bed in the morning, the thought of it stays with me for a long time in the day. I make making my bed the first task of my day. Not only does it make me feel good, I also feel like I can complete the next task and so on.

Plan Your Day
Starting your day with a "I'll see how the day goes" mindset can make you feel unorganised and that can leave you feeling anxious. To avoid feeling this way, I plan and execute one or two tasks in a day. Completing my tasks will make me feel fulfilled and that helps put my mind at ease. The important thing about this tip is to be careful not to plan more than you can achieve in a day.

Take A Break
This sounds cliché, right? Trust me, it is not. Sometimes I say I am taking a break but the whole time I'm actually thinking about what I'm supposed to do next or what I was doing prior instead of really just taking my mind off of things. I am still learning to focus on what I'm doing during my break. I make it my mission to make sure break time means break time. If I'm eating, I want to focus on the smell of food and the flavours in my mouth. Be careful not to make the same mistake of stressing yourself out during break time.

Cut Back On Some Caffeine

About three months ago I started drinking coffee. I drank one to two cups a day, every day. This habit started to affect my sleep and I started feeling as if I could not do much without a cup of coffee in the morning. Some days I even felt like I needed another cup in the day. When I didn't give into that "need", I got a little stressed from the conflict of wanting to work without coffee and my body asking for just one cup. I noticed this very quickly and stopped drinking coffee ever since! Coffee can cause lack of sleep and you could get addicted to caffeine. Caffeine addiction can be hard to beat. Limit the need for coffee.

Our bodies is constantly in communication with us. They ask for food, water, a break, bathroom time and other things. All we have to do is listen. The practice of self-care is intentional. Our bodies do so much for us, it's only fair we take good care of them. I hope these were helpful. What other tips of leading a less stressful life are on your list? I would love to hear from you.