Have you decided to focus more happiness this year? Today we're rounding up a few great books about happiness and the pursuit thereof. Don't worry, no “good vibes only!” toxic positivity here — these books go beyond the typical “how to be happier” platitudes. Two of the books are aimed at everyone, and the third is for parents (plus a bonus rec for a free course at the end which, coincidentally, begins enrollment today).

Are you trying to boost your happiness this year by taking a social media break or leaving social media all together? (I have actually gotten some good mental health advice from therapists on TikTok, FWIW…) Taking mental health days as needed? Finding a fulfilling hobby? Trying meditating? Making time for therapy? Making more time for friends? (A new study found a boost to “life satisfaction” of even small social interactions like greeting or thanking someone!)

Either way, these books can help! In the past, we've also discussed how your career affects your happiness and rounded up what readers say are the best things are that they've done to improve their happiness.

Readers, have you read any books on happiness, including what seems to be the mother of all happiness self-help books, Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project? What are your favorites?

Psst: If you have books to recommend (on any self-help or career topic!), shout ’em out in the comments!

3 Books About Happiness and the Pursuit of Happiness

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

By Jen Sincero, 2013, (Amazon/Bookshop)

Since her very popular You Are a Badass came out in 2013, Jen Sincero has expanded it to branded coaching, speaking events (with her “signature brand of motivational comedy”), a guided journal, a planner/organizer, and notecards, well as two more books: You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth, You Are a Badass Every Day, and Badass Habits (all on Amazon).

This book, the original, can help you identify self-sabotaging behaviors and generally become more self-aware; substitute bad habits for good ones; tackle your doubt; set honest goals while still pushing yourself a bit, and focus on them regularly; and so on. (Yes, it does venture into “manifesting” territory there, but I suppose manifestation is a spectrum.)

Sincero offers bits of advice that may not be revelations but are still useful reminders, like “If you want to live a life you've never lived, you have to do things you've never done,” and uses humor throughout the book.

Praise for You Are a Badass:

• “Sincero brings a fun, feminine verve to now well-tread self-help tropes. … The tone is far more feisty than academic, and there's humor on every page, all of which is exactly what her intended audience most needs.” — Publishers Weekly
• “Sincero … brings a fun, feminine verve to now well-tread self-help tropes, offering a promising new title in the genre that's not as completely irreverent as it sounds.” — Publishers Weekly
• “If you’re in the need of a jumpstart, something to remind you that your authentic, individual, totally irreplaceable self is, in fact, badass, then this is the book for you. … [I]t’s prompted me to get going on several projects I never thought I’d actually accomplish.” — San Francisco Book Review

{related: how to improve your happiness [CorporetteMoms]}

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

By Oliver Burkeman, 2013 (Amazon/Bookshop)

If you're skeptical about “happiness books” in general, you might want to try The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. In an NPR interview, the author, a Guardian writer named Oliver Burkeman, said he's not a fan of typical self-help books. “[T]here's a lot of research now to suggest that … saying positive affirmations to yourself in the mirror can make you feel worse and that visualizing the future can make you less likely to achieve it,” he said.

Burkeman advises people to avoid advice that tells you to avoid negative feelings or negative words, “manifest” your desires, or simply expect to be happy and cheerful. Instead, he writes, we should embrace failure, uncertainty and so on, and cites various sources who believe that the relentless pursuit of happiness results in just the opposite.

Praise for The Antidote:

• “Burkeman's tour of the ‘negative path' to happiness makes for a deeply insightful and entertaining book.” — The Los Angeles Times
• “A fascinating, wide-ranging exploration of negativity, positivity, failure, success and what it means to be happy.” — Kirkus Reviews
• “Burkeman’s ability to present sentiments in fresh, delightfully sarcastic packaging will appeal to the happy, the unhappy, and those who have already found a peaceful middle ground.” — Publishers Weekly

How to be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute

By KJ Dell'Antonia, 2018, (Amazon/Bookshop)

If you're a parent, you might remember the Motherlode blog at The New York Times and recognize the name of KJ Dell'Antonia, its former editor and a mother of four. Using that experience, the many interviews she has done with parents over her career, and a lot of research, she wrote How to Be a Happier Parent in 2018.

In an interview with Your Teen, Dell'Antonia said, “I thought about the things I could do to make parenting more fun. But I was looking at lists, and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do fun things. I hate fun things. I don’t want to do anything else; I just want the things I’m doing to suck less.' It was the book that I wanted to read and also the book that I wanted to write.”

In trying to help readers find joy in parenting (no, not ALL the time!) Dell'Antonia's book focuses on nine key areas that families struggle with: homework, chores, screen time, sibling conflicts, and more. She offers small ways to make them better and shares how to do more by doing less.

Praise for How to Be a Happier Parent:

• “[I]t is about giving yourself permission, as a parent, to prioritize and work toward your own happiness, even if that means your children don’t get 100 percent of your attention and energy and money 100 percent of the time.” — The Chicago Tribune
• “We can be happier parents — if, that is, we understand what gets in our way and what we can change. With real advice and fascinating science, this book helps you be the parent you want to be.” — Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit
• “Dell’Antonia’s writing style is friendly, funny, and always understanding. She’s not going to judge how your family does things—she’s simply offering a less stressful alternative that might bring you greater happiness as a parent.” — Your Teen

“The Science of Well-Being” — the Yale Course

Here's a bonus recommendation!

You may have heard of the incredibly popular “Yale happiness course” that now has a free online version called “The Science of Well-Being.” Available on Coursera, it starts enrolling today! (You can get access to all the course materials for free, but a $49 fee earns you a shareable certificate.)

The course is designed to increase your happiness and boost your productivity, eventually helping you “successfully incorporate a specific wellness activity into your life.” You can find out more in detail by checking out a couple of articles that summarize and review the course from Business Insider and iNews.

Here's the course by the numbers:

• 4.9 stars from 37,000+ Coursera reviews
• 10 weekly modules of 1–3 hours each (videos, readings, and more)
• 8 quizzes
• 19 hours to complete (on a flexible schedule)

There's also a version for teens!

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post 3 Great Books About Happiness appeared first on Corporette.com.

What is the “right way” to take a mental health day? I've seen a LOT in popular media lately that I'm having kneejerk reactions to as NOPE, but I'm not sure the “old” way to take a mental health day is correct either. So let's discuss.

To back up a bit: we already discussed generational divides in the workplace and the recent NYT story, “38-Year-Olds are Afraid of their 23-Year-Old Employees.” But one quote from the story, I think, deserves its own post:

Ali Kriegsman, 30, co-founder of the retail technology business Bulletin, wasn’t sure, in the past, how to respond when her Gen Z employees insisted on taking days off for menstrual cramps or mental health: “Hey I woke up and I’m not in a good place mentally,” went the typical text message. “I’m not going to come in today.” Instinctively Ms. Kriegsman wanted to applaud their efforts to prioritize well being — but she also knew their paid time off could undercut business.

I had a visceral reaction to reading that. I've felt those emotions myself (overwhelmed, anxious, depressed), but I still feel like that's not the way you take a “mental health day.”

I also saw a Facebook meme that said, “I want us to normalize ‘I cannot work today because I am not in the mental space to engage with others' and that be okay.” Which — yeah! As a person with feelings I totally agree with that. BUT… society (and most businesses) just do not run that way.

In my day (I'm a Xennial born in 1977), if you weren't in the mental space to engage with others, you called in sick with a vague ailment and worked from home that day. If you had to go in because Reasons, you put on your resting bitch face, shut the door to your office if you needed to, and played Solitaire on the computer until you had to do something for real.

It looks like back in 2018, Alison at Ask a Manager would have agreed with me:

With “mental health days” — meaning a day that you take off to relieve stress/avoid burnout or when you just can’t face the world — say that you’re “under the weather” or “a bit ill.” You can’t really call up and say, “I can’t bear the thought of coming into work today,” but you also shouldn’t make up a hacking cough. It's fine to just be vague. (In fact, it’s fine to be vague even when you have an actual sickness like the flu or horrific diarrhea or whatever. Decent managers will accept “I’m sick today and won’t be in” rather than expecting or even wanting a detailed list of your symptoms.)

Just since 2018, though, I feel like there's been a lot of movement in this space, particularly with noteworthy people normalizing the concept of being proactive about you mental health. Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, and other celebrities have recently made headlines for advocating for mental health awareness, for example.

If you think you're going to need a lot of mental health days, it might be worth looking into workplace accommodations, which may be available for “psychiatric disabilities.” (Verywell Mind has a list of those disabilities.) Here's some further reading on it from the U.S. Department of Labor — it lists accommodations (such as sick leave, more breaks), modifications (private offices, room dividers), equipment requests (white noise, organizer programs), job duties (removal of non-essential job duties, division of large assignments into smaller tasks and goals), and management accommodations (positive reinforcement, more frequent meetings, additional forms of communication), etc.

So I guess these are my tips:

The Right Way to Take a Mental Health Day

1. If it's last minute and unplanned, call in sick with a vague ailment (“I'm not feeling well today” works!) and promise to do what you need to from home. (This may mean check your email every 4 hours or so to make sure balls aren't dropped and urgent questions are forwarded to someone else.)
2. If you anticipate that you'll need frequent mental health days, seek accommodations and modifications pursuant to the Department of Labor's list above. (Or, as commenters have noted, just schedule a PTO day off.)

(Obviously, if it's planned vacation or other anticipated leave (e.g., maternity, surgery, etc) then set your out of office email and enjoy whatever time off means for your office — in some offices that still means checking email once a week or so, so know your office.)

Readers, what say you — what is the right way to take a mental health day? If you've taken a mental health day at work, what was your technique? If you manage people, what have you seen others doing that strikes you as the “right way” to take a mental health day?

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post The Right Way to Take a Mental Health Day appeared first on Corporette.com.

Readers had a great comment thread earlier this year about the best things you've done for yourself that have made you happier, and we thought it deserved its own post!

So, what things have you done — big or small — that have improved your life and made you happier? What changes did you make? What did you stop or start doing? We'd love to know!

We've rounded up many readers' answers below — and we've linked to past posts with related info and advice.

The Best Things Readers Have Done for Themselves That Made Them Happier

Improving Physical Health

• Lifting weights
• Getting regular exercise
• Starting an active hobby
• Walking to work or biking to work
• Reducing sugar intake
• Cutting out — or cutting back on — alcohol
• Seeking diagnoses for health problems (we had a whole discussion on where to start if you're exhausted and have no energy)
• Getting more sleep
• Getting massages
• Doing yoga
• Seeing doctors regularly
• Taking vitamins, probiotics or using CBD

{related: little things that make us happy}

Improving Mental Health

Of course, a lot of the things listed above boost your mental health, too!

• Taking medication for anxiety
• Going to therapy
• Meditating
• Making sure to breathe and relax
• Trying to avoid drama
• Choosing to be happy
• Letting go of the small stuff

{related: how to cope with an emotional hangover}

Improving Your Appearance

• Going to a dermatologist for acne treatment
• Getting microneedling for acne scars

{related: what are your best habits? which are habits you're trying to break?}

Miscellaneous

• Hiring a cleaning service (This was a popular one!)
• Working from home (Another popular one!)
• Making more friends
• Adopting a dog

Readers, if you didn't chime in on that comment thread (or if you did and have more to say!), do tell: What are the best things you've done for yourself that have made you happier?

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post The Best Things You’ve Done for Yourself That Have Made You Happier appeared first on Corporette.com.

Readers have had some interesting threads lately on not being able to destress and trying to deal with an anxiety hangover — so let's talk about this. (Upon some research, it looks like the phrase we're searching for is “how to cope with an emotional hangover.”) The idea here is that you've had a period of high stress, high anxiety, high emotion, but it's passed now… and you're still feeling spent and uneasy. So what is the best way to cope with an emotional hangover and find your equilibrium again?

We've had readers complaining because they're out of the high-stress phase of their jobs and they still can't sleep, can't destress, and are otherwise still feeling the after effects of their high intensity period. US News calls this the “let-down effect,” when you get sick or rundown after the stress or anxiety has passed. Thought Catalog has a slightly cheekier take on it, asking, “Have you been feeling stuck lately? As if you’ve consumed several Long Island iced teas, but for your soul?” 

This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

Obviously, talk therapy can help, as can some medications (we've talked before about how to make time for therapy), but some other ideas that may be of help:

How to Cope with an Emotional Hangover: Get Caught Up on Sleep

Do what you can to get caught up on sleep by enforcing good sleep hygiene, including as dark a room as possible (temporary blackout shades exist!) (affiliate link), avoiding screens the hour before bedtime, and, for some people, possibly something “extra” like listening to a sleep-related podcast (readers have shouted out Gentle Whispering Maria in the past!), weighted blankets, melatonin, or more.

Personally, I save brain candy books for bedtime to help take my brain off my day — if I'm trying to catch up on sleep I just have to be extra strict with myself to put the book down at the proper time. Here are our most recent posts on the different types of insomnia, how to optimize your sleep, and how to figure out why you're exhausted and have no energy (because it could actually be a lot of things).

Some great sleep aids if you're struggling with sleep issues…

Dealing With an Anxiety Hangover? Work It Out

Exercise can be a big help — personally I find that cardio helps the most when I'm stressed, but I like the focus that comes from lifting weights as well.

Oddly enough for me I find that more “restorative” exercises like yoga are harder for me when I'm stressed, particularly with an anxiety hangover like we're talking about, because I get far too impatient during stretches and my mind starts going through anxiety loops.

Even just throwing yourself a 5-minute dance party can help. (Shake it off!)

Psst: some of our favorite home massage products include this reader-recommended back massager, this shoulder massager (similar), and this mini massage gun. Along similar lines, this $6 scalp massager is soothing, and these toe stretchers are actually better than most foot massage products.

Engage Your Senses To Deal With Lingering Stress

Every week during law school I went to the mall to shop — it was my primary way of destressing. I didn't buy a lot of clothes, but I walked around, touched a lot of fabrics, looked at the colors and prints, and felt my mind drift away from whatever outline I was working on at the time. I didn't even realize what I was doing, but at the time this was my way of engaging other senses — people who enjoy destressing by baking, particularly kneading dough.

(You can also steal a trick from the kiddos and make your own playdough, or look into the approximately ten thousand “stress fidgets” on the market today — you can play with some thinking putty, buy a fidget cube, or bliss out with some sand art (affiliate links).) This probably isn't a “one and done” kind of thing, but it can help you manage stress and anxiety as you move throughout your life — this is the idea behind a “sensory diet,” and can help you from getting so stressed you can't destress.

Journal and Process

There are a bunch of guided journals out there that you can buy right now (for example, Start Where You Are) if regular journaling doesn't appeal to you.

I don't know that I've written about it before, but something that often helps me process things that's perhaps a bit unusual (woo) is to ask myself a question before I go to bed. In the case of a stress hangover, it might be something like, “why can't I let this anxiety go,” or “why am I really stressed.” Really focus on the question as you fall asleep. Then, the first dream that you remember (it may take a few nights), interpret as the answer to your question.

(Or something that happens a lot to me is I wake up with a weird memory that I didn't have before, and I interpret that memory as the answer to the question. For example, when I was in college and couldn't decide whether to go to law school, I focused on the question of whether I should go, and woke up with the memory of how I'd really wanted to take karate lessons in the fifth grade but didn't follow through because clearly it was too late for me and all the other kids would have been taking karate lessons for years and years at that point. Obviously, this was stupid thinking for a fifth grade… but the adjusted rationale — there's always time to start something new — fit perfectly as the answer for my question about law school, which helped me stop feeling stressed about law school as an immediate thing I had to decide before I graduated.) 

Readers, what are your thoughts — have you felt lingering stress or anxiety symptoms after an intense work period has ended? How have you cured with anxiety hangovers — and what is your best tips to cope with emotional hangovers? 

(Another great option: meditative, artsy activities like coloring or cross stitch!)

Pictured, great coloring books for adults: one / two / three / four
also: recommended pencils & markers

Further reading:

• 13 Ways To Cure An Emotional Hangover [Thought Catalog]
• The Let-Down Effect: Why You Might Feel Bad After the Pressure Is Off [US News]
• Ways To Cure Your Stress Hangover [Mindful Living Network]
• What You Need to Know About Dealing With ‘Emotional Hangovers' [The Mighty]
• Emotional Hangovers Are a Real Thing — Here’s How to Cure Them [SheKnows]
• How To Cure an Emotional Hangover  [Talkspace]
• 9 Strategies to Cure Emotional Hangovers [Psychology Today]

Stock photo via Shutterstock / Dean Drobot.

The post How to Cope with an Emotional Hangover, Lingering Stress, or Residual Anxiety appeared first on Corporette.com.

Reader M had a question about post-interview anxiety, something I notice coming up in the comment threads a lot…

I had a second round interview this week, and I'm waiting to hear back. The job is working in-house for a big company. Their legal team is spread throughout their offices, so my first interview was with HR, then my second interview was with their VP Legal Counsel and another Senior Counsel attorney.

I think it went well, but I'm so anxious. My first question is what to do with anxiety while waiting to hear back about a job? My second question is if anyone has stories from successful interviews that might shed light on whether or not it went well.

The wonderful thing about interviewing for jobs outside your own company is that they have no idea what a stressball you may be after the interview. (Of course, for jobs inside the company you have to keep your cool, which is even tougher — but hopefully less stress-inducing given that you can “read” the personalities better and they know you better.)

There are two interesting questions here: what to do to ease post-interview anxiety, and how to know if an interview went well. I'll take the second one first.

{related: how to focus on work when your mind is elsewhere}

How to know an interview went so well that you'll get the job: You can't. Unless you know the interviewer (or the interviewers), you really won't have any idea if things went well.

I've been on some interviews that I thought went laughably bad (and then was offered the position) and some that I thought went over-the-moon great (and then didn't get the position). (I fondly remember one interview, during interview week at law school: I sat down, prepared to talk about the law firm, and was shocked when the interviewer said “Yeah, so, based on your first year grades and the fact that you're on law review, we're going to extend an offer. Can I answer any questions you have?” — couldn't they all be so easy?)

But interview success depends on that fine mix of who else is interviewing for the position, what the company is looking for (which may be something as simple as “someone different than the last person to hold this job” in ways that you can't really identify), what MOOD the interviewer is in, where they are in the interview process (too early and they may not have figured out what they want; too late and it may just be a polite gesture).

So how do you handle interviews? You focus on what you can control: you. You give the best interview you can, you prepare as much as you can, you follow up to the extent that you feel comfortable (there is a wide spectrum, on both sides, of what is “go getter” versus “pushy”) — and you let the cards fall where they may. It isn't necessarily a personal reflection on you if you don't get the job.

{related: how to cope with an emotional hangover}

But all of this is easier said than done — the anxiety after an interview can be intense. We've talked about the best ways to relax after a stressful day before, and now might be a great time to reopen that discussion.

Our Top Tips for Dealing with Post-Interview Anxiety (or Other Anxiety!)

I think general stress is one thing, but I think of anxiety as really strong stress that is triggered by one particular situation or one thing, which you probably can't do anything about.

Personally, I do the following kinds of things when I'm anxious, particularly with post-interview anxiety:

Dealing with Anxiety Trick #1: EXERCISE

A walk, a run, a good aerobics workout — it's amazing how I can feel my shoulders and neck “unlock” in the middle of the workout. You carry so much stress with you, and you don't even realize it.

Trick #2: Make dates with a lot of friends.

This way you keep occupied enough that you don't dwell on the post-interview anxiety too long, and by seeing a lot of different people you won't drive any one person crazy with your own anxiety.

In my experience, I've found that friends have to be very, very close to sit through more than 3 conversations about the same stress points, especially when there a) is no clear way to resolution, or b) they've suggested things to handle the situation (more appropriate where it's boyfriend- or family-related stress) and you haven't taken the advice.

Trick #3 to dealing with anxiety: Find your brain candy.

When I'm stressed, I find that focusing my full brain power on anything else seems impossible. So I turn to things that I call brain candy — reality TV shows or easy-to-read books that are well-written but lurid enough to suck me in.

I just devoured (again) Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series,* and Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse mysteries* always capture my attention. I particularly find that these books are great before bedtime, because they get my mind away from things that are stressing me out. See all of our list of running selections here, including the best methods to deal with anxiety through laughter like light, funny tv-shows!

Update: some of the more recent funny books I've enjoyed include:

• Bossypants, by Tina Fey
• Yes Please, by Amy Poehler
• modern comedy: Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan (fiction)
• modern romantic comedy: Love on the Brain, Ali Hazelwood; Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld (an updated take on Pride and Prejudice), pretty much this entire series on Billionaires of Manhattan, by Annika Martin, Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie
• historical romantic comedy: The Duchess Deal, by Tessa Dare (it's laugh-out-loud funny, promise)
• science fiction / rom-com / time travel / history: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Wills

Kat's weird way to deal with post-interview anxiety: Make lists.

Maybe I'm alone here, but lists sometime help me solidify my thinking. I've used them to nail down what I'm worried about (you'll be amazed at how the list goes on once you start writing them down), and to make pros and cons lists to remember that there are both pluses and minuses to getting the situation.

I find that lists are also helpful to realize that some of the thoughts in my head can be kind of silly when I'm stressed — particularly with post-interview anxiety stress. For example, write out “this one job will make or break my entire career” — see, doesn't that look fairly silly? (This isn't to say that there aren't hugely important, singular opportunities — things like a Supreme Court clerkship, for example. But those are few and far between, and if you have gotten to the interview point on something like that, your career already sounds golden.) 

{related: the best lists that are weirdly useful}

Another great way to deal with anxiety: SLEEP.

Everything looks better in the morning. We've talked a lot about sleep hygiene over the years if you're having problems falling asleep, or waking up in the middle of the night…

Final tip on dealing with anxiety: Avoid anxiety loops

Every so often, I let myself get overwhelmed by stressful, anxious thoughts, and I go into what I call “anxiety loops” — StressPointA takes me to slightly-related StressPointB which takes me to slightly-related StressPointC (and so forth) which leads me back to A.

When I find myself caught in a loop, I can't actually make any decisions or come to a helpful point of view — I just get panicked and frenzied, leading to sleepness nights and totally unproductive days. Avoiding the loop is critical — getting enough sleep (see above re: brain candy and exercise), keeping occupied, etc.

I also try to avoid too much “alone in my head” time when I'm in one of those moods — I once broke down in tears in a yoga class because my brain was looping.

(Once you're in a loop, well… a glass of wine may help you ease up or cause you to loop further; it really depends on you and the moment.

If you find yourself frequently in this situation, talk to your doctor because there may be a prescription that can help, either on a sometimes basis or an every day basis. Be careful, though: anxiety drugs can be very addictive, so don't borrow a friend's pill — talk to your doctor about them, and follow his or her instructions.)

{related: how to deal with overwhelm}

Temporary relief for anxiety: treat yourself to a massage!

A full massage is great if you can swing it; otherwise I often spend time using a shoulder and back massager similar to these.

Psst: some of our favorite home massage products include this reader-recommended back massager, this shoulder massager (similar), and this mini massage gun. Along similar lines, this $6 scalp massager is soothing, and these toe stretchers are actually better than most foot massage products.

As noted above, coloring books for adults are great for dealing with “looming doom” overwhelm — these are some of our favorites: 

Pictured, great coloring books for adults: one / two / three / four
also: recommended pencils & markers

Readers, what do you do when you're trying to relax from anxiety, either from a job interview or from a particularly stressful situation? What are your best tips for dealing with post-interview anxiety (or otherwise)?

And, do you have any fun interview stories to share — times you knew you nailed it, or wondered how it could go so wrong?

Updated imagery via Stencil.

The post Dealing with Anxiety (Post-Interview Or Otherwise) appeared first on Corporette.com.

Here's a fun topic: what are the best ways to relax after a stressful day? We had an open thread about ways to relax a thousand years ago (well, 2010), and we've talked about ways to turn off work mode and how to turn a bad day around, but it's been a while there too.

So let's hear it, ladies — what are your favorite ways to relax after a stressful day? What things do you do on the daily to help you unwind — and what things do you build into your schedule regularly to help reduce stress and help you relax? Do tricks like rituals or compartmentalization help you relax?

This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

For my $.02, as I've mentioned before I read super silly brain candy books at bedtime, which usually helps me with whatever anxiety is ailing me that day (or unwind from whatever outrage-inducing thing I read in the news or on Facebook that evening) — and if I'm really stressed out I may just get into bed after the kids are down and read my book or play on my iPad instead of settling in front of the TV.

{related: how to make the most of your evenings}

I can never quite get the hang of doing serious exercising at night, but a long walk & talk on my cell phone often helps me relax.

A full massage is a rare indulgence, but if I can swing it I often use a shoulder and neck massager like these.

Psst: some of our favorite home massage products include this reader-recommended back massager, this shoulder massager (similar), and this mini massage gun. Along similar lines, this $6 scalp massager is soothing, and these toe stretchers are actually better than most foot massage products.

If I'm skittish and overthinking things, making lists sometimes helps me relax because the list becomes a brain dump — and it lets me know that I can hit the ground running the next day.

I'm not really a bubble bath person, but a long hot shower at the end of the day is also a good way to unwind. This is probably as close as I get to a ritual — if I've had a stressful day I actively think it's time to “wash the day off and start fresh.” In terms of semi-regular things, a massage always helps get rid of knots — if I'm really tense and can't get away I sometimes try to do foam rolling with the guidance of videos like this one from Livestrong/Ashley Borden.

{related: how do you deal with overwhelm?}

Also in terms of semi-regular things (I guess?), I recently started going to Mass again, mostly because I'm forcing my 6 year old to do PSR and his classes are at the same time — and it's been interesting to note how just sitting quietly for 45-60 minutes is relaxing, even if I'm not really listening or following along with the Mass — no phone to play with, no 10,000 tabs open (either mentally or literally), no to-do lists… (I know, bad Catholic!).

Coloring books for adults are a great way to relax after a stressful day! These are some of our favorites (affiliate links): 

Pictured, great coloring books for adults: one / two / three / four
also: recommended pencils & markers

Here are some easy kits and books to get you started on cross-stitch for stress relief…

How about you guys — what do you think is the best way to relax after a stressful day? What do you do on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and a quarterly basis to keep stress away? Are there things you AVOID at the end of the day because you know they'll stress you out?

Picture via Stencil.

The post The Best Ways to Relax After A Stressful Day appeared first on Corporette.com.