The best cure for the body is a quiet mind. – Napoleon Bonaparte
Try typing in the words “how to deal with” into the Google search bar in your browser. Several suggestions will appear to complete the sentence because Google likes being helpful that way. Among these will almost certainly be “how to deal with stress”.
Suggestions in the Google search bar are based on popularity, which means that a lot of people have googled this topic which means that a lot of people are under stress, or at the very least know someone who is under stress.
This is, of course, far from surprising. A monotonous daily life is a prison for the soul. Add it to the fact that the pace of today’s life is more like a whirlwind, this increases the chaos and stress. How many among us are actually spending more hours at home than at the office?
Thirty or forty years ago, life was much slower. Leisure and relaxation were more accessible and considerably less strange. But we live in the here and now, where being ‘busy’ and strained to the point of stress seems to be the vogue. So how do we deal with it?
► Get away from social media.
No, this isn’t saying that you must uninstall your Facebook or Twitter apps from your phone in order to gain a little sanity. Rather it is saying that you should get away from them from time to time.
No one can deny the usefulness of social media, either from a business point of view or for personal communication. They allow us to share information and to promote ourselves or our businesses with little to no cost. Most important of all, they can connect people who are physically separated by distance far more easily and less costly than any other method. The usefulness of social media is really nothing short of overwhelming.
And that is the keyword: ‘overwhelming’. Social media can overwhelm our lives. Being constantly linked to social media networks means that the bombardment of information is endless and this, frankly, is tiring.
When it comes to information on social media, there are two kinds. The first is the ‘good’ kind. We have photos of people looking happy and friends celebrating. Aren’t these good? Of course they are. Looking at these kind of pictures—smiles, celebrations, beautiful places —can make us happy.
But a constant flood of those?
A study in Singapore in 2010 linked teenage depression with overexposure to social media, Facebook in particular. When teenagers, already vulnerable from the volatility of their hormones, see happy photos of their peers, they cannot help but compare. They see the proof of their friends’ satisfying lives, great achievements, all the pretty and expensive things other people seem to have, and then they look at their own lives which may appear much bleaker, much harder, and less happy in comparison.
What these teenagers—and everyone else, including us—often forget is that the happy people in these photos also have their share of difficult times. They simply choose not to document those times and share the ‘ugliness’ on social media. Very, very few people are willing to “air their dirty laundry”, so to say.
And then there is the ‘bad’ kind of information. A clear example is the news. 70% of the news is dominated by these so-called bad things, simply because they gain more readership and viewership. Imagine two headlines for articles in the same webpage. One reads “The government announces plans to make college tuition 50% cheaper.” The other one reads, “A man, initials DT, put his hand on a part of the female body usually unmentionable in polite society.” Guess which of these two articles will get more clicks.
Perhaps it is our curiosity which makes us more attracted to ‘bad’ news. The point is the media knows this too. This is why every news channel is replete with bad news from natural disasters to human tragedies. It is important not to be totally uninformed, but imagine being bombarded by this depressing news 24/7.
The nature of the information aside, it is of no help to heap more new information on an already strained mind. We need to stop the influx for a while. We need something familiar and /or comforting. We need to wind down. We need to rest.
However, is this enough?
► Plan your escape
Distancing ourselves from social media once or twice might help, but it won’t make a difference in the long run unless we do it repeatedly.
In other words, make it a habit.
A good habit comes from planning. It does not have to be anything drastic. For example, each day we can give ourselves an hour, or even half an hour, only to relax. Listen to music or watch an amusing TV show or read a good book. Treat ourselves to a relaxing dip in the bathtub. Go for a jog or a swim.
But try to do it regularly. Make it a habit.
Going on a vacation is also an excellent option. Plan it in advance, don’t wait until stress overwhelms you because it may lead to overindulgence or even the wrong choices which will only make us feel worse. Websites like inspirock and TripHobo make planning a vacation so fun and effortless. You only have to input the date and destination, and they will suggest a plan that you can easily modify to suit your tastes. Some like inspirock even offer additional options to personalize your vacation based on your interests.
The most common excuse for not taking time off to wind down and relax is we just don’t have time for it. But as legendary journalist Sydney J. Harris said, the time to relax is when you don’t have time for it. So always, always take a time-out.
