If you’re human then you’ve experienced stress. Stress can come from all sorts of different areas of life: from work, from home, and everything else that we find ourselves doing. We’ve all experienced it and sometimes too much stress can build up. On the other hand, I believe stress in a small amount can actually be a good thing. I think of when I feel challenged at work or when I’m working out at the gym there is a mild level of stress there. However, too much stress for too long can bog us down and depleted the happiness from our lives. From my experience when stress and burnout hit at the same time that’s when I feel the most defeated and this is obviously something that should be avoided.

We can’t always control the things that happen at work or in our personal lives and therefore stress is something that we’re going to encounter. The good thing is that we can control how we diffuse stress and if we do this we can avoid the negative impact from stress and use small healthy amounts of stress to our benefit as a way to keep us motivated and engaged in different areas of life.

Here’s 5 ways of letting go of stress.

One way to be intentional about reducing stress is making time for yourself. I know that you parents out there with young kids are saying “Yeah, right, time to myself, huh? What’s that?” But even just taking 15 minutes to have to yourself in the middle of a busy day can be extremely helpful. This could be some quiet time to read a book, mediate, or just sip some hot coffee on a Saturday morning. For me, I like my quiet time. I’m totally an introvert and being around a lot of people makes me feel stressed. After being around a lot of people I enjoy just being alone and having some quiet time to myself. The same is true for me at work. On my lunch break I enjoy finding a quiet place to be by myself. I have found that more and more when I’m driving by myself I turn the radio off and just drive in silence and focus on relaxing and letting go of the stress.

Another way to reduce stress is to hit the gym. There’s something about going to the gym and getting a good sweat on that feels good and helps reduce stress. I’ve read and heard from several people that exercising releases endorphins which are chemicals that are naturally produced by your body that help you to feel good. Also, exercising on a regular basis can increase your metabolism which can help you to feel like you have more energy to conquer the challenges that you face day to day. This will help you to feel ready to tackle the things that you would normally dread. Having a better attitude because you have more energy can help you to feel more confident and less stressed.

Another great way to relive stress is prayer. Sometimes we don’t always have someone to talk to about the stressful things that are going on in our life, or sometimes we don’t want to burden the ones that we do have to talk to with all of our own stresses. The great thing about prayer is God always has time to listen to us. He’s always there willing to take the burdens from our lives. Asking God to help you through that hurdle that you’re facing can help you to let go of the stress by realizing He is for you and with you every step of the way.

Eating right can help you deduce stress . When I’m stressed it’s easy to eat junk food as a quick treat that temporarily makes me feel good. I get a huge smile on my face when I think of stuffing my face with a bunch of glazed donuts. But junk food is only a temporary fix that has really bad side effects.