Learn to manage stress effectively and get a grip on your emotions!
Everyday modern life could be really stressful, demanding and quite suffocating at times. You just feel stretched tight by all the emotional and mental strains, without even sparing you a minute for your ownself.
Most of us are always occupied, mentally. We don’t give our minds a break, even when we are on work breaks!
How to manage stress at work is also a big question? Relaxation and stress relief is rather an underrated practice. If you don’t know how to spend your leisure time without being drenched in upcoming work anxiety, just keep reading and you will find the most effortless yet effective solutions to stress management!
Table of Contents
Why is it important to manage stress?
You might be wondering what worse could happen to you if you keep functioning as you have been doing for past years or decades without solving the stress problem? In the long run, you will witness it all, if you don’t manage this underlying problem right now!
Workplace issues and real-life problems can be really daunting at times to every one of us. Most of us don’t know how to manage stress at work.
With increased tensions and pressures, our tendency to fall prey to mental breakdowns greatly increases. But it is a well-understood fact that your work efficiency and thinking abilities deteriorate if you are under some constant mental stress. Your nervous habits start to empower you and everything starts to look worse.
“Stress is the trash of modern life-we all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.”
Danzae Pace
What stress does to your body?
You might be thinking that your frequent insomnia, constant fidgeting, and decreased productivity is due to some illness. But what you are overlooking is a fact less understood by most people.
Our physical and mental health is deeply interlinked. When we are stressed, our brain doesn’t function as it should. Ergo, we become restless or lethargic under the spell of this problem.
Some people might be developing a sense of social withdrawal due to it. Others might be facing serious health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes due to it.
After going through all this, you must have decided if you are under stress or not! Some people don’t even need a serious problem to get stressed about.
In their idle time, they would just overthink about everyday matters and get stressed. If you are one of those, this read is going to be equally beneficial for you.
Manage stress while using the phone!
We often find our elders telling us that if we shut down our devices and gadgets for a while, we will find our lost mental peace.
This is true to some extent because undoubtedly, the increased use of social media and the digital world has brought our problems, even more, closer to us. For example, the emails!
Nonetheless, you can’t detach yourselves from it. Even when you take a work break, you are mostly scrolling through your newsfeed. So we have found you better options to spend your leisure time on the phone when you don’t wish to sleep.
Apps to help you manage stress
Whether its a workplace battle or an occasional outburst of negative emotions, the following tools will help you manage stress and get back on the right track!
These android/iOS apps are designed to soothe your nerves, calm your soul and relax your senses. Now lets jump right to the 10 amazing apps to manage stress:
1. Tingles App to manage stress
Before we introduce you to this amazing app, Tingles, you need to know about ASMR (i am assuming not many people know about it!). Do you ever feel tingly or relaxed when someone does your makeup, brush your hair or do you ever find yourself sleepy when your doctor is too soft-spoken and polite? I never knew if all these things had a meaning, until one day when I was looking up for ‘relaxing makeup videos’ and ended up discovering the whole phenomenon behind it, ASMR!
ASMR, an acronym for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. These videos, initially started by some Youtubers, are made using binaural microphones, high definition videography, sleep-inducing sounds and roleplays(act like the sweetest dentist/dermatologist/makeup-artist/nurse/hairdresser/teacher or anything you could ever imagine) to make the whole experience a lot more real, calming and sensory.
The listeners need to wear earphones to immerse themselves in the relaxing environment created by the person in the video. They do feel a bit weird at first, but as one gets used to of them, they can’t go without seeing them at least once a week!
After their popularity on Youtube, ASMR artists made their own mobile application, specifically made to help you enjoy ASMR even more.
2. Calm
The Google Play Editor’s Choice 2018, Calm app features meditation, sleep aid, gentle movement and stretching, and music designed to help you focus, relax, and sleep. It gives you the daily boost of energy to kick start your days and wind up your nights.
It provides you meditation techniques, sleeps stories, breathing programs, masterclasses, and relaxing music. It is powered by top psychologists, therapist, and meditation experts.
3. Breathe2Relax:
This health, fitness, and stress management tool that helps you learn diaphragmatic breathing. Breath2Relax is designed as a portable stress management tool that provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body, to caution its users.
It gives them instructions to learn diaphragmatic breathing that is an excellent stress management skill. The exercises have been well documented the body’s response to every day tensions. It helps greatly with:
- Mood stabilization
- Anger control
- Anxiety management
- stress reduction
You can either use it on your own or with the assistance of a healthcare worker.
Also Read: Top 10 Must-have free Android apps in 2019
4. HAPPIFY
Sometimes we human beings just blame our lack of gratitude and pessimism to stress. Some people do not need to have a specific problem to be stressed on, they might just be overlooking all the umpteen reasons to be grateful, thankful and contented in life! If you follow the trend too, then HAPPIFY is here to remind you to be happy!
This brain-training app is based on research showing that some types of activity can help you fight negativity, anxiety, pessimism, and stress.
It uses science-based activities to help you foster positive traits like gratitude and empathy. It lays huge stress on the significance of mental health in the 21st century.
5. Daylio
Some days you just feel pissed off for no reason at all. You do feel guilty in the inner side, for being a bad person that day but you just can’t help it, right?
Some days you have genuine reasons to be stressed! Daylio – Diary, Journal, Mood Tracker helps you keep a private diary and track your mood without writing down a single line! It will greatly help you manage stress, identify problems, and find effective solutions.
6. Antistress – relaxation toys
Stress relief techniques vary from person to person. I have heard people telling that dishwashing helps them release stress, others say that doing mathematics or solving a few sums helps them manage stress and focus well! On a regular workday, if you ever feel stressed or get bored, let Antistress help you out!
It can help you with ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, and anger!
7. Pocket Yoga
The more you invest in your physical health, the better is your mental health. If you do yoga regularly, you will feel the change in your sleep patterns and your everyday morale. Nonetheless, not everyone can wake up early morning before work and do yoga or go for a run.
With the Pocket Yoga app, you can manage stress, get flexible and calm your mind anywhere anytime! It contains 10-15 poses or exercise options, a range of yoga styles and all levels of difficulty.
8. Sanvello
Formerly, Pacifica, Sanvello helps you manage symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. You will always find the right tools a tap away to relieve yourself of all the social anxieties and work stress! It offers clinically validated strategies and support to help you feel happier over time.
It provides guided deep breathing and muscle relaxation exercises, and daily anti-anxiety experiments to help you control what triggers you!
9. Headspace: Meditation & Sleep – Manage stress App
Headspace is your guide to health and happiness. It provides you with mindfulness exercises and guided meditations. It puts your mind to bed for a while and creates perfect conditions for a restful, undisturbed sleep.
It helps you incorporate the life-changing skills of meditation in your life! Just a few minutes of this revolutionary practice can bring incredible changes to your mind, body, and soul, hence your productivity will escalate!
10. Pay It Forward
What’s better than converting your negative emotions into something productive, that is beneficial to humanity?
Pay it Forward helps you do that. It motivates you to perform a daily act of kindness. It is proven that indulging yourself in an activity like that, reduces stress greatly!
It provides you with a list of suggestions and then connects you with a community of people for social networking required to perform the deed.
Inspired by the success of online charitable projects like the Ice Bucket Challenge, Nobly – pay it forward allows you to create a post for any act of kindness, from volunteering at a soup kitchen to donating to charity or simply paying for a stranger’s meal. You can then keep a track of your deeds.