Irony & Conquering Stress in the Moment

Approximate time reading this post: 2 minutes

This past week has been full of irony and forceful relaxation but hey, at least it's an attempt to keep calm. I am feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment by everything I have already explained before in my previous posts. So I won't bore you with my average college student struggles this time.  But instead I would like to talk about some new thoughts I have adopted to combat these struggles as soon as possible and keep my young adult sanity. I also completely blame the supermoon on Sunday night for my craziness. 

At an attempt to forcibly relax, I participated in the chair-yoga session at PVCC on Mental Health and Awareness Day created by student, Lauren Mitchell, who did a truly incredible job putting together the whole event. It was nice to be reminded that even with minimal free time you can still find peace by simply taking a few deep breaths. Breathing in and out and focusing solely on the feeling of your abdomen expanding is an easy way to take a moment when needed. 

Photos by Geneva Patterson

Photos by Geneva Patterson

Around the same time of the yoga session, I was researching and interviewing for an upcoming article on odd stress relievers that people have, which ironically is stressing me out. But in this research I found an article by my favorite go-to page, "Harvard Business Review" (which you can read up to 15 articles a week, instead of five, if you sign up for free), where it talked about "How to Handle Stress in the Moment." Below is a brief overview of the tips they gave throughout the article:

  1. Identify your stress signals
  2. Don't think of it as stress: super useful if you think along the lines of "I have had an assignment like this in the past and I succeeded. I can handle this too."
  3.  Take three deep breaths
  4. Enlist a friendly ear
  5. Make a list: college students love lists.
  6. Project an aura of calm

Also laughter and cacti are good things to have/do as midterms are fast approaching. Best of luck to all of you stressed out college kids. Be sure to read my upcoming article, maybe you will want to adopt some of these odd stress relief tactics!

 

Good songs I can't get enough of recently: