First, relax your body
It’s hard to sink into a state of zen if you’re one big ball of knots. “When you live a life full of demands, your body regularly releases adrenaline and cortisol, increasing energy expenditure that can result in muscle tension,” says Gregory Fricchione, MD, director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Try progressive muscle relaxation: Tense the muscles in your toes for at least five seconds, relax for 30, and repeat, working your way through the muscle groups up to your neck and head.
Downshift during your commute
“If you walk in the door decompressed, it gives you a jump-start for the rest of the evening,” says productivity expert Julie Morgenstern, author of Time Management from the Inside Out. Do you take public transportation home? Resist the siren call of email and try a meditation app, such as Insight Timer, Calm, or Stop, Breathe & Think. “Call a friend or loved one, listen to music—any activity that breaks you out of your normal train of thought should help,” says Morgenstern. “One client found it effective to set his relaxation intentions on his way home from work. He’d tell himself, ‘I want to enjoy cooking with my partner and make sure so-and-so does homework, but I’ll ask in a gentle way,’ and so on.“
Log off twitter
The more often people check social media accounts, texts, and email, the higher their level of stress, revealed the American Psychological Association’s 2017 Stress in America report. Findings from the Pew Research Center underline another negative Facebook effect: Women are particularly vulnerable to stress from social media due to being aware of lousy stuff happening to friends.
Tame your taskmaker
An urge to continually tidy up the house or yard may be a response to chaos all around you. According to Brigid Schulte, director of the Better Life Lab at the Washington, D.C., think tank New America and author of Overwhelmed, “When you’re strapped at work and stretched at home, having things in order can seemingly restore equilibrium.” All together now: Yes. This. One sane way to tame that life-is-out-of-control feeling: Quit scattering tasks among your calendar, notepads, emails, sticky notes, and memory. Says Morgenstern, “Decide on a single, reliable system, and it will help turn off the ticker tape of to-dos in your brain.”
Ask yourself this
“When people assume that if they don’t get to their to-dos, their world will fall apart, that needs to be questioned,” says mindfulness expert Ellen Langer, PhD, professor of psychology at Harvard University. Reason with yourself: What’s the worst that will happen if you don’t declutter tonight? Five years from now, will you be happier that you excavated the coat closet or that you had coffee with a friend? Exactly.