6 Micro Hacks to Reduce Stress in Your Life
By controlling what makes you unhappy, you will be happier
Your phone, annoying sister-in-law, TV, hangover, and many other things are constantly shooting stress at you from all angles.
There is no avoiding it.
You want to find time and energy to reduce stress in your life, but you have gotten so overwhelmed that you don’t know where to start.
Don’t worry! I gotchu.
These are 6 (typically controllable) micro-hacks to help you reduce your stress levels.
1. Maximize your sleep
It will be very, very difficult to lower the stress in your life if you do not get a sufficient amount of sleep.
Let’s be clear… You need 7+ hours regardless of whether you are “able to operate” on 6 or less.
This can be difficult because high stress makes it hard to sleep. The worse your sleep gets, the harder it will be to get more sleep.
So, do whatever you can to improve your sleep asap!
2. Increase your self-knowledge
No matter who you are, eventually, hard times will come at you. When they do, you want to make sure you are well-equipped to take them on.
There is no better superweapon to help you than self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge will help you know exactly what you need to do whenever a problem arises.
It will bring peace to your mind, increase the quality of your decisions, and guide you to a better life.
3. Play more
About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist because I was very stressed. It only took him about 90 minutes to realize that I needed play time.
Yes, you read that right!
My entire life was structured around either trying to be a good boyfriend or finding success.
He insisted I play.
I insisted I would play when I knew I had achieved those goals.
He made it clear that to achieve my goals, I also need to have some play.
And so, I started playing more. I played chess, board games, and spent more time training in Muay Thai.
My stress dropped, and things became… easier.
4. Control who you spend your time with
The easiest way to add stress to your life is to spend time around people who are always stressed out.
Let me be straight up with you. You need to cut those people out, or at least minimize your time with them. They will drive you insane!
Prioritize the happy people. The ones that give you more energy by being around them.
Those contagious balls of positivity.
5. Prioritize healthy behaviours
Your body is going to hate you if you avoid working out, drink alcohol often, eat bad food, and do anything else that is unhealthy too often.
These healthy behaviours not only help you reduce your stress, but they also make you look better, have more energy, help you get better sleep (see point 1), and live longer.
And if you are less stressed, living longer will mean a lot to you.
You may think going on a bender is fun, but if it is adding days of stress to you (and taking off days from your life), it probably isn’t worth it.
6. Do what you love
The easiest way to be happy and to reduce stress is to prioritize the things (or people) you love.
What makes you happy?
What do you wish you could do more often?
What do you do that makes you enter into a flow state?
Do that, and do it a lot.
The ultimate cheat code to life is when you do that thing for a living!
To wrap it up
Stress tends to increase dramatically when you focus on what you cannot control.
For example, you can’t control the traffic. Even if you had taken a different route, it’s still rush hour!
The 6 micro-hacks above are some of what you can control. And by focusing on these things, you will see your stress reduce significantly.
Thanks for reading