Stress Less: Stop Stressing, Start Living
By Kate Hanley
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Eight out of ten Americans report being stressed. In Stress Less, you can learn how to conquer stress and find inner peace with these practical mindfulness exercises. Each exercise can help you pause, evaluate your mental state, and pull yourself out of a heightened state of anxiety and back down to a calm, clear-minded base. Each page has a prompt that can give your mind, body, and heart a moment of peace in a world of chaos.
Kate Hanley
Kate Hanley is an author, writer, and host of the How to Be a Better Person podcast. She’s been quoted in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Fortune, and has appeared on the Today show, where she noticed seconds before the cameras started rolling that her sweater was on backwards. Kate lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and two kids. Visit her at KateHanley.com, on Twitter at @KateHan, or on Instagram @KateHanleyAuthor.
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Reviews for Stress Less
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- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Snippets like bites of chocolate for the well being of the heart and mind.
Book preview
Stress Less - Kate Hanley
Introduction
Each day is an opportunity to live your best day. Each day you have the chance to find your peace, your purpose, and to feel good about yourself. These goals (and many others) are absolutely possible if you take charge of your stress. So, the next time stress develops in your life, instead of ignoring it or pushing it down, take the time to look inwardly and ask yourself, What can I do to change it? How can I stress less?
After all, everyone has stress, but it is how you choose to cope with it that can make all the difference in your daily life. This helpful guide will give you 100 stress-reducing techniques that will not only calm your body, but your mind as well, and allow you to live your life to its fullest.
Inside you’ll find relaxation and calming exercises from meditation to yoga to visualization that can all be accomplished in ten minutes or less. These techniques help you shine the light of awareness on your stress, so you can recognize it, deal with it effectively, and get on with your day.
You’ll also discover motivational quotes with each exercise to give you hope, inspiration, and sometimes a bit of laughter (all proven stress-busters!). Use these quotes to give yourself a little boost during the day when you feel stress starting to creep over you.
The majority of the strategies shared here will help you to focus more on yourself—your body, mind, and soul—as a way of shifting your attention away from the things that stress you out. The wonderful paradox is that by focusing on yourself, you also help the people around you.
If you do what it takes to up your contentment and clarity, you’ll expose the folks around you to less stress, and you’ll inspire them to cultivate their own sense of calm too. It’s a lovely ripple effect that just keeps going and going. And it all starts because you picked up this book.
Here’s a way your breath can come to your rescue. Try this:
As you inhale, imagine calm pervading every cell of your body, carried in by your breath.
As you exhale, visualize every iota of angst you’ve got being drawn out of your body where it can evaporate into the air.
Repeat as many times as you like, but know that even one of these breaths—done with intention—can create a noticeable change.
…
Many people feel they’re bad
at meditating, but if you can count to 10 you can do this.
As you sit someplace quiet, breathing normally, count each out-breath. When you get to 10, start again at 1.
When you realize that you’re on 27 or that you stopped counting altogether, start again at 1.
Counting your exhalations gives your mind something tangible to focus on, which can help with the Am I doing this right?
thoughts that so often pop up.
To really make this practice goof-proof, set a timer for five minutes so that you don’t have to wonder how much longer to keep going.
…
What’s the most relaxing place on Earth for you? Is it in front of a fire in a mountain lodge, or on a hammock near the ocean?
Close your eyes and imagine yourself there, wherever it may be. Really experience it—what can you see, smell, taste, and hear? How does your body feel when you’re there?
Because your brain can’t perceive a difference between real and imagined relaxation, you can enjoy a truly restorative mini-vacation even if you can’t hop a flight or take time off.
…