9 ideas for lowering stress (10 would be too stressful)

Like most of you, I always seem to feel stressed out.

But de-stressing became another thing on my to-do list, and it was stressing me out.

So I took a few days off work and found what I needed to do:

1. Tap dance.

Friends suggested yoga. I’ve tried it, but in the quiet of the studio, my brain won’t shut off. It shouts, “What are you doing sitting here in lotus pose? You have so much to do!”

But tap dancing works for me, I think because it’s noisy. When I’m tap dancing, I can’t think about anything else, or I risk falling on my face.

2. Time with friends.

“Want to get a pedicure?” Rhonda asked after tap on Saturday. Sure. I even had a gift certificate.

We went for shrimp tacos afterward. Turns out spending time with friends lowers cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. 3. Make deposits.

I asked my newsletter readers for advice, and Gail Yates told me her friend Charlotte compares steeling yourself against stress to banking. “You wouldn’t make a withdrawal before making a deposit,” she wrote.

Get a massage or take a weekend trip. When stress hits, the withdrawals don’t deplete you.

4. Volunteer.

It seems contradictory to find more to do, but Marion Durham wrote, “Appreciating my good fortune and looking beyond myself gets me out of the rut of only looking at or stressing over my own issues.”

5. Put the phone down. Escape the news of the world even if for an hour.

6. Clean. When my surroundings are less chaotic, so am I.

7. Take a nap.

8. Take the dog for a walk. The night air is cool. I take deep breaths of it.

I discovered I need to schedule some things, like watching “Peaky Blinders” with my son or going out with friends. But what worked best?

9. Give yourself a break.