How College Students Can Reduce Anxiety and Stress
When you’re in college, there’s no way to get around the inherent stress and anxiety completely, but there are definitely ways to reduce it dramatically. It’s all about finding ways in your everyday life to combat the sources of your stress and to diffuse it in healthy ways. Here is how college students can reduce anxiety and stress.
Take Yoga
It’s no secret that people have been practicing yoga for hundreds of years as a way of alleviating stress and anxiety. In India, yoga is more of a spiritual practice that aims to center one’s mind, body and soul. Although, for most people in the western world, it is a way to reduce stress, increase flexibility and improve strength. Doing just 30 minutes of yoga each day, or even every other day could dramatically change your life and the way that you feel.
Ride a Bike
One of the best ways to let off some steam is to ride a bike. If you have a short commute from home to school, then a bike is a great way to get around. Will you not only get some exercise, but you can also take in deep breaths of fresh air, release the serotonin, dopamine and endorphins that naturally make you feel happy and listen to your favorite music. If you do this every day then you are bound to feel a lot less stressed and anxious by the time you get to school or at home.
Meditate
If there’s one thing that most of us don’t do nearly enough – or sometimes not at all – it’s meditation. You don’t need to learn any deeply spiritual meditation techniques from a guru or a monk in a Buddhist temple, you just need to practice the art of staying calm and listening to your thoughts. There are all kinds of meditation exercises that you can look up online, and there is no wrong way to meditate. If it helps, you can find a mantra to repeat to yourself both while you’re meditating and in between meditations to keep you relaxed and centered.
Stay Organized
Disorganization is one of the biggest causes of stress and anxiety. If you don’t feel like your life has structure or is going in any one clear direction, then you will inevitably be feeling stressed and anxious. That’s why you have to make a huge effort to get all the elements of your life organized at the beginning of the semester so that you can rely upon that structure to keep the ball rolling throughout the term. If you start dropping the ball then you will be wasting a lot of time trying to catch up.
Avoid Drama
No matter who you are, there’s bound to be dramatic people all around you in college – even if you’re going to Marylhurst University. Some people just thrive off of drama and if they start to recognize how they can push your buttons to get a response out of you then they just won’t be able to resist. That’s why you need to try and create distance between yourself and these people so that you don’t waste any time or energy on unnecessary drama.
