Anxious Smoker? How To Relieve Stress Without Cigarettes
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Many people report that they smoke because it helps relieve their anxiety. If that describes your situation, then you may want to think of healthier alternatives than smoking. Here are a few ways that you can relieve stress in your life.
Vaping
Many find vaping as beneficial at relieving stress as smoking. There is a host of benefits to vaping. You will not have any more burn marks in your clothes. Your clothes and your breath will both smell better. Additionally, there is a wide variety of choices in e-vapors, like those from The Vape Mall, allowing everyone to find a favorite. Finally, you will likely live longer as the experts say that each cigarette takes from seven to 11 minutes off your life.
Journaling
Experts suggest that journaling is a great way to relieve stress, so grab a notebook and start writing out your thoughts. Unlike writing a paper for class, you should just start writing down your thoughts as they occur to you. The end process will often help you make better decisions or let you see the errors in your current way of thinking. Additionally, you may discover that the root of your stress is something totally different than what you think is causing your stress.
Yoga
Doing simple yoga moves can help with lower your stress level. Yoga forces the participant to focus their mind on a single activity, which can help eliminate frantic thinking allowing a person to come back to the problem in a calm manner after a workout. Additionally, mindfulness often helps you focus your attention on one thing at a time instead of allowing 1,000 ideas to try to vie for your attention all at the same time. Focusing on your breathing often helps relieve jitters and nervousness. Depending on the level of physical workout, yoga can also release dopamine into the body making you feel happier.
Reading
Many find that reading even just a few minutes allows them to escape reality helping to keep stress at bay. Research carried out by the University of Sussex suggest that reading just six minutes helps to relieve body tension and helps to calm the mind. Reading has been shown to release your inner creativity allowing you to come back to the problem causing the stress with new creative approaches that might work. Those books or short stories with strong narrative arcs are shown to reconfigure how the brain works for several weeks after reading for just 3.5 hours. If another person is causing your stress, reading can be particularly beneficial as people who read regularly are shown to be more empathetic.
There are many ways to relieve stress rather than smoking. Try one of these ideas today, and enjoy a healthier stress-free tomorrow. The results may surprise you.
