Pinterest: A Tool for Stress Relief and More

Creating a vision board can be extremely empowering for goal-setting.

I’ve been a fan of “vision boards” for many years–they can help you to really create a clear picture of what you want in life and they stimulate creativity. They can provide reminders of what goals I’d like to really pursue and it’s fun to look back and see when I’ve made progress. (Here’s a list of more benefits that come with vision boards.)

As a vision board fan, I was thrilled when Pinterest came out. It helps you make simple vision boards that can also include information you can use to put your plans into action and instructions on how to actually reach these goals. Today, you may want to create a new pinboard at Pinterest that can help you with one of the following:

1. Learn about something new
2. Reach a goal
3. Create a more peaceful life (here are some of my boards that can help with this!)
4. Deepen your knowledge on one of your favorite topics
5. Collect recipes, craft ideas, workout plans, make-up tips, DIY projects, and more

It’ll take just a few minutes and could be the beginning of a fun habit that can move you forward in your life. Also, you can check out my boards for ideas–I’ve cultivated several. Happy pinning!

How Morning Gratitude Transforms Your Day

You may not feel THIS happy first thing in the morning, but after a little gratitude…

You may have heard that increasing your level of gratitude via a gratitude journal or other simple habit is a good idea (and you’re right!) but if you haven’t actually implemented this practice into your daily life, today is the day to start! I’ve been keeping a gratitude journal on and off since high school, and during the times in my life when I’ve been more consistent with it, I could tell the difference in the rest of my day! But don’t take my word for it–there’s other evidence to show that you’ll likely experience this and other benefits if you do the same. A research-based recommendation is to identify three things you’re grateful for per day. However, if the thought of maintaining a journal seems like a lot of work, here are a few ideas that can make it simpler, or help you fit it into the rest of your daily routine:

1. Write it in the margins of your daily planner, if you keep one.
2. Mention it on social media if you post a lot anyway. (You can also post what you’re grateful for on my Facebook page About Stress Management and start a conversation!)
3. Mention it aloud to yourself as you shower or drive.
4. Bring it up in conversation.
5. Use your phone to take pictures of things you appreciate as you go through your day.

Quick–think of one thing you’re most grateful for

…now you only have two to go and your day is on a better path!

Note: You can receive daily emails including messages like this, additional resources, and occasional free gifts and recommendations by signing up for the Daily Piece of Peace Newsletter here!  And if you find this helpful, I’d love it if you would share and help spread the word.

Happy New Year–Let’s Make 2017 Count!

I hope you enjoyed the holidays and had a great New Year’s Eve, and feel ready to take on 2017 with gusto! I’m a big fan of January because of the possibilities that always lay ahead; each new year is a new chance to get further along the path to our goals and dreams.

This year, I have a new goal: I’m creating this new website focused on stress management, happiness, and healthy living. As you may or may not know, I wrote and maintained About.com’s stress management website for over ten years and had literally millions of readers there. About.com has since transitioned that site to become part of Verywell.com, which is a fantastic health website that was launched in 2016. I’m very happy to be part of Verywell, but I’ve missed having my own website to run, complete with blog and newsletter. I really enjoyed being able to have more of a personal connection with my readers, so I’ve created this site, Daily Piece of Peace, which (as I mentioned) is focused on stress management and the broader topics of health and happiness.

I invite you to spread the word if you like what you see here. I must be honest and say that I’m while I’m very experienced in writing about these topics, I’m new to web design, so expect to see the site develop much more in the coming months, but you can enjoy watching someone else build toward their goals while you build toward your own. I’m also sharing with you some of my best tips for creating and reaching the goals you want for yourself in the coming year. Let’s all work on this together!

I wish you the best 2017 you can imagine, and I’ll be periodically sharing resources with you to help make that happen. You can also find daily tips on my Facebook page: About Stress Management. Happy 2017!!

Stress Management Shouldn’t Be Stressful!

Every day is a new opportunity for stress relief!

Stress is an unavoidable part of life, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Some forms of stress are necessary and even desirable–for example, eustress (the type of stress you experience watching a suspenseful movie or riding a roller-coaster) can keep life interesting and exciting.  However, chronic stress (the type of stress that feels constant and threatening), or too much stress of any type can lead to a host of health issues and a less satisfying life.

Managing stress is key.  We don’t need to rid ourselves of stress, but we do need to create a balance between too much stress and not enough, between the negative forms of stress and the stress that keeps us feeling vital and alive.  Just as we need work-life balance, we need balance with stress. But stress management can become complicated.

There are many ways to relieve stress, which is both an upside and a downside to stress management.  Here are just a few of the many options:

• Mental stress relief: You can think about things differently, through a shift in your focus or a positive reframe.
• Mindfulness: You can take a step back from your stress and focus on the present moment instead with mindfulness exercises or meditation.
• Taking action: You can do a myriad of different things to change your situation, with varying consequences.  Sometimes this makes things better, but sometimes things can backfire and you can create new stress.
• Build resilience: You can form habits that can actually build your resilience to stress.  For example, exercise and meditation have both been found to make people less reactive to stress over time, and bring greater results with continued practice.
• Calm your body: If you can calm your body and reverse your stress response, you can approach your challenges from a more reasonable and less reactionary frame of mind, minimizing your chances of worsening the situation or slipping into a state of chronic stress.
• Build resources: By mobilizing the resources you have–supportive friends, applicable skills, and even money–you can lessen stress by feeling more prepared to handle whatever comes.

These are just categories of stress relievers, and there are more. The number of options for stress relief can feel empowering, but they can also create stress as you sift through your options and try to decide the best approach. What many of us do is we find a go-to coping mechanism or approach to stress and then use it for most of the situations we face, whether or not it’s the best approach. This can cut down on endlessly weighing options, but it can also create stress because what works for one situation may not be the best option for another.

In the interest of keeping stress management as simple as possible, I recommend a two-pronged approach:

Find short-term stress relievers.  These are fast-acting ways to calm your body and approach stress from a more relaxed place. Breathing exercises, for example, can reverse your stress response in about a minute or two, and then you can move on to taking action from a more peaceful place.

Develop a resilience-building habit.  Here is where you can get into a go-to stress relief habit and stick with it. Find something (again, exercise and meditation are great options here) that can help you to feel less stressed over time, and practice it regularly. Yoga is wonderful for this, as it combines exercise and meditation, but walking, jogging, weight training, mindfulness, and many other habits can qualify here. The key is to practice regularly; a daily 10-minute session is better for stress relief than a 70-minute session once a week or even two 35-minute sessions a week.

That’s it!  You can create a more thorough stress management plan for sure, or you can even find two or three habits that help you to relieve stress every day instead of just one.  The point is to find something that works for you and build on it.  Once this simple plan starts working, creating a more intricate plan with greater flexibility and more options will become much easier. But for now, what will you do today that helps you feel less stressed?

Many of these options are discussed in my book, 8 Keys to Stress Management.  You can also find more information on stress at Verywell.com; I’ve written hundreds of articles on stress management that can be found there.  Finally, this site offers a newsletter that shares stress management tools you can use; I highly recommend that you sign up.  (This free newsletter introduces you to simple research-based techniques for managing stress, and recommended tools that make stress management infinitely easier.) But for now, what will you do today that helps you feel less stressed?