A great mood isn’t always a day in meditation or a day in the gym or a change. And that’s when you have to take a few seconds to take a break when stress, irritation, or mental fatigue starts building up.
Modern life is one of constant notifications, pressure to be on-the-go, work pressure, traffic, social pressure and information overload in a never-ending loop. When the mind is overloaded, taking a break from that cycle can help stop it from continuing.
The idea of very short habits is simple: make them easy enough to practice regularly. A 30-second breathing exercise or moment of attention may seem insignificant by itself, but repeated throughout the day, these pauses can be integrated into a whole framework for stress management.
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Some simple habits of life that can be implemented in daily life.
1. Stop And Slow Breaths
When people are in a stressor, their breathing can be faster or shallower. Subtly slowing down the breath will give you a brief physical pause from the situation.
Let go and stop for 30 seconds for a few slow and comfortable breaths. There is no need to force extremely deep breaths. Rather, just breathe slowly, and keep breathing slowly, comfortably, and naturally.
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Breathing exercises are used as relaxation methods, as they can shift the focus away from imminent stress in people’s minds and into the present moment.
The key thing is consistency. A brief breathing pause is needed to take a minute to react when you are frustrated by a frustrating message, a meeting, or a bad situation.
2. Relax Your Face And Shoulders
Stress can show up physically without us noticing. The jaw may tighten, the shoulders may rise, and the muscles around the forehead and eyes can become tense.
A quick body check can take only a few seconds.
Drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, and relax your hands. Take a comfortable breath and notice whether your body feels different.
This does not solve the source of stress, but can work to break down the physical habit of being tense.
It can be particularly useful for people who spend long periods at a desk or staring at a screen.
3. Look away from the screen
Short breaks from a screen may be useful for resetting your brain.
Instead of switching from app to app or webpage to webpage, put the phone down and look away from the computer for a moment. Look at something in the room or, if possible, look outside.
The aim is not to turn 30 seconds of social media into a time-consuming information-consuming activity. There is nothing wrong with browsing social media during a “break,” which could replace one source of stimulation with another.
A genuine pause gives the brain a moment without another notification, headline, or message demanding attention.
4. Notice something around you.
A little grounding should be done so that a person can get back in the present.
For 30 seconds, take a look at what’s going on around you. You could see, hear, or feel. Pay attention to what’s happening around you that you would normally ignore.
For example, notice the sound of traffic outside, the sensation of your feet touching the floor, or the temperature of the air.
So mindfulness practice takes place by consciously focusing on the present moment that you don’t immediately judging it. And just as a little exercise can help you get out of the automaticity.
Small pauses can break the Stress Cycle
The point of these habits is not to make 30 seconds less stressful. Rather, they provide small windows of opportunity to interrupt automatic reactions.
A person who is irritated will probably respond immediately to a message. Someone who feels overwhelmed will go back and forth between tasks. Someone suffering from anxiety will be checking their phone for reassurance.
There is a brief delay between feeling and response.
And that gap may sometimes be enough to make a more deliberate choice about what to do next.
5. Change Your Environment For A Moment.
If you have been sitting at the same desk for hours, stand up and move somewhere else for a few seconds.
So go to a window, go to another room, or just stand and stretch. That physical change can be a little bit of a break from the environment you’ve been working in.
For people working from home, this can be very easy to incorporate into the day. A 30-second movement break can also be repeated several times rather than being treated as a single wellness activity.
The larger principle is not to spend the whole day in one place or in one mental context.
6. Think of One Thing That Is Going Well.
With a mind on problems, it is hard to see anything else.
Taking a few seconds to identify one thing that is going well can shift attention, even if only temporarily. It might be something so ordinary: completing something, talking to someone, having dinner, or just having a moment to think.
This is not to say that difficult things don’t happen. Rather, it is to deliberately widen the attention so that stressful experiences aren’t the only things occupying the mind.
7. Give yourself 30 seconds to do nothing.
And perhaps the simplest habit is also one of the hardest for people accustomed to constant stimulation.
For 30 seconds, do nothing.
In between, we don’t check the phone. Do not open another tab. Don’t immediately fill the silence with music or a video. Just sit, breathe normally, and let the moment pass.
It may be quite uncomfortable at the beginning. That discomfort is in part due to how many people have become so used to constant stimulation.
And with time, short periods of quiet can be easier to get into.
More Per Consistency than The Clock.
There is nothing particularly magical about the number 30 seconds. The value of these habits comes from making them short enough to be realistic and repeatable.
For a person who takes a few short pauses during a stressful day, that may be more manageable than a complex wellness routine which is attempted once a week.
But such a treatment of depression, anxiety disorders or other mental health issues shouldn’t be a substitute for professional treatment. Low mood, extreme anxiety or symptoms that are hindering daily life need professional care.
But for a day’s stress, the smallest moments of breathing, movement, grounding, and rest can actually be quite useful.
Sometimes the first step towards feeling calmer is not doing more. It is simply stopping for a few seconds.
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