6 Tips to Cope with Stress for Students
Students work hard to improve their grades, complete their assignments, and pass their exams. Stress for students is a real concern.They trade time, attention, energy and a lot of nerves to graduate in order to start earning money.
Here’s the problem:
Because many students hardly pay attention to their mental health during their academic journey and rarely practice stress management techniques, they’ll often end up buying health using the status and money they’ve worked so hard to acquire. That’s what I call “bad business”.
As a student, your academic duties are important. However, they don’t come close to the importance of your mental wellbeing.
Stress is an extremely tricky factor that every one of us must learn to manage. If we don’t, it will eventually catch up with us, potentially ruining whatever we may have built throughout time.
In today’s post, I’m sharing 6 stress management approaches that every student should learn and practice as soon as possible. Health is always more important than recognition, status, and validation.
Spend Time in Nature
How often do you completely disconnect from your chores and take some time for yourself? Most students are caught up in an endless routine that involves studying, having fun, eating, and sleeping.
Science suggests that spending approximatively 20 minutes in nature will significantly impact your stress hormones in a positive way. Find your “nature spot” and disconnect every now and then. Observe how you feel and keep doing it if it helps.
Exercise Regularly and Eat Healthy Food
You already know this. Sport and nutrition play significant roles when it comes to your physical and mental health. They don’t only provide amazing benefits like energy, focus, good looks, motivation, and so on, but they also significantly reduce the amount of stress you’ll experience throughout college.
Improve Your Time Management Skills
Poor time management is one of the most common causes of stress among students. Whenever you’re in a rush, more stress hormones are being released. When you have to turn in an important assignment in two hours and you haven’t even started, you’re putting yourself in a very tough position that will bring a lot of stress.
Improving your time management skills isn’t rocket science. Here is a time management essay you can use to get started. It all begins with proper planning. Before you go to sleep or right after you wake up, establish your daily objectives, their priority, their urgency, and the possible distractions that may arise.
Treat your time with respect and learn to say “NO” to distractions.
Get Enough Sleep
There are so many students who neglect their sleep. The result? Sleep deprivation. This is an extremely tricky condition that will prevent your body and brain from working at their full potential.
The worst part is that you won’t even realize that you’re sleep-deprived, and you’ll have the feeling that you’re simply a “little tired”. To prevent college stress, make sure that you understand your “sleeping needs”. Some students need 6 hours of sleep, while others need 7 and a half or even 9 hours to wake up refreshed.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the art of getting fully immersed in the present moment. Let me give you an example. When you walk on the street, you can either think about what happened, what will happen, or what happens.
If your mind is in the past or future, you’re preventing yourself from making the best of your time. If you stay present, your mind will stop “stressing” about the potential problems that you’ll face in the near future.
This is another form of disconnection. You are basically disconnecting form an endless cycle of tiring thoughts that generate stress and anxiety. If you’re curious, read Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now” to grasp the full concept.
Learn to Observe Your Thoughts and Feelings
Lastly, you should learn to observe your thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings don’t stop if you command them to stop. To release yourself from them, you need to “move beyond them” and perceive them as passing clouds. This is one of the best ways to cope with stress.
Be the observer, not the experiencer, and you’ll instantly feel relieved. Every time you feel stressed, become aware of what’s going on and acknowledge that you are way more than thoughts and feelings.
Final Words
If you were wondering how to cope with stress during college, wonder no more. Start implementing what you’ve learned in this post and notice the results. Some stress management techniques will work, while others won’t.
Find the approach that suits you best and use it every time you feel stressed and overwhelmed by academic responsibilities. Remember the “bad business” that I’ve mentioned above and think about your long-term future. No matter what you do, treat your mind and body with care and respect!
PIC: https://mobygeek.com/features/ai-can-now-predict-college-students-stress-levels-6496
BIO: Emma Rundle is a passionate psychologist, content developer, and academic tutor. She’s constantly preoccupied to teach students how to cope with stress and preserve their mental health. In her free time, Emma spends time with her family and travels across Europe to attain various non-profit movements.
