I know this sounds like faffy lightweight advice, but Iâve learned that the #1 thing you can do to help in stressful times is avoid moralizing and beating yourself up over your perceived failures to Do All The Stuff Youâre Supposed To Do. So, you didnât fold your laundry? Big deal! Things will slow down at some point and you can get back on track. Freeing yourself from self-imposed judgments takes a huge mental load off and helps clarify priorities and what you can focus on to get out of the hole.
Anxious? Clean space clean mind. Depressed? Do your laundry or wash your linens. Lack of self confidence? Go a bit further on your skin care treatment. If youâre really glued to the seat, read a book. Itâs good escapism and if you canât do that then itâs probably time to look inward.
Obviously weâre all so different, but that also means itâs hard to give advice because how we process stress / how it manifests physically / how we soothe it can vary so much from person to person, and even season to season. Iâve learned to take advice and TRY EVERYTHING until I find what works for me. In my experience itâs better to try 10 different things to weed out what works for you than to pick & choose what you think will work. Just try whatever is feasible from what we recommend! Okay, rec time: Microdose gummies were a huge help for me in certain seasons. I am not a person that wants to get high; I donât have anything against it, just donât do it myself. The microdose is so so so low that you donât feel it. If anything, the ones I took felt like a light melatonin feeling. Helped me calm down a lot and often helped me sleep. Baths were huge in certain seasons. Add some salt, dim the lights, play some ambient sounds or your fav calm album, and fully submerge into the void. Long drives are how I make sense of lifeâs puzzles. I often take the long way home if I think the extra time will help me arrive at a calmer state. I always find myself enjoying the local traffic, getting to really look at my surroundings, using red lights to breathe and refocus my thoughts. 3 practical things that are relatively easy to do. I think anxiety / stress rob you of your time and energy. Iâve spent so much of my life under stress only to get through the very thing that stressed me and realize that I had nothing to worry about. I lost days, weeks, maybe months to stress and anxiousness. At this point in my life Iâm very aggressive about not living life with stress or anxiety in the drivers seat. Itâs my life to enjoy and I only get one and I want as much of it as possible to be filled with joy / happiness / peace. Hope that helps! Sending you good thoughts + prayers + vibes.
Try not to completely give into depression and let everything in your life go. If you have an LSAT coming up and need a job, maybe you just need to prioritize one to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Having a singular focus is really helpful because itâs less overwhelming and confusing. And making some sacrifices is better than burning out and failing everything. Can the job possibly wait? If not, I would say its really helpful to create a schedule for yourself. Youâll see that you can get a lot done in a day and still have tons of scheduled time to relax and rot in bed. But remember that rotting in bed feels soo much better when you know you spent some time making your life better. Doing nothing will make your day feel empty and meaningless. And it gets harder to get out of because you get used to it. Even spending an hour on a goal is an accomplishment. Even if you spent 10 hours on your phone, and one hour on a goal, in a year you would have way more going for you than if you spent all day on your phone. Most people are awake for 16 hours, so you could spend 8 hours being productive and still have around 8 hours to relax in bed. Schedule your day so you get a lot of relaxing breaks, so work doesnât feel so painful. Stick to a predictable schedule. Make sacrifices in any areas that arenât a priority. Like definitely say no to plans you donât have time/energy for. And donât see days that donât work out as a failure. Like I said, even if you spent 10 hours in bed, just get 1 hour in and count that day as a success. Then you can at least say to yourself that the day couldve been worse. Donât wait for yourself to have more energy, just use the small amount of energy you have because it kind of regenerates itself and the more productive you feel the more energized youâll feel. I also recommend taking as many not destructive substances as necessary to get yourself going like even something like drinking more coffee than usual can give you that initial boost. And antidepressants can really help if you think you might be depressed and arenât on them already
I donât know who needs to hear this, but in most cases youâre gonna want to season your rice. After it cooks, put some oil/butter on that steamy starch and stir and salt it. It doesnât even need to be a huge amount, but itâs going to improve things so much. You could even put a little vinegar in there tooâgo crazy. Everyone is gonna be like, âwow your rice tastes so goodâ and you can know that itâs all because of your use of FLAVORS and SCIENCE.
Like, from the Sabrina Carpenter song. âI canât make it afterallâŠcause Iâm a singerâ âYes, Iâm actually having a great dayâŠcause Iâm a singerâ