Stress is everywhere. One can't ever do away with it in its entirety. What one can do, however, is learn to manage it better. Here are some tips to manage stress better. Including even one of these in your everyday life can bring down stress levels and improve the quality of your life significantly.

Personalise

A huge amount of stress exists in our lives because we do things to impress others rather than to satisfy ourselves. Recognise and realise that your life - your circumstances, your aspirations, your strengths, and weaknesses are your own. They are unique to you, and thus, so are the challenges you face. What works for your friend or your colleague may not necessarily work for you. Let us try to set our targets according to who we are and not who we want others to see us as. 

Life is an exam in which everyone gets a different question paper. Peeking into your partner's paper won't help you solve your own.

Compartmentalise

Carrying over stress from our professional life to our personal space makes life difficult for a lot of us. It causes unnecessary tension, prevents us from relaxing, spoils personal as well as professional relationships, and brings down efficiency. 

Let us work towards creating a better work-life balance. Let us try to keep our personal and professional lives separate. 

Prioritise

We face a multitude of tasks on a day-to-day basis, each seemingly important. This keeps us in a perpetual state of tension. 

It helps to organise these in order of priority. It's a good idea to begin the priority list with whatever task seems the easiest to accomplish first. This gets one off to a rolling start, thus keeping the confidence levels high, which makes the other tasks on the list seems easier. 

Accept & Let Go

Our lives carry a perpetual mismatch between expectation and acceptance. This results in stress. 

Let us try to accept that there are certain things in everyone's life that one can't do anything about. This way, we can focus more on things that we CAN do something about. 

Cars carry spare tyres because we, as a civilisation, accept that punctures will happen. Imagine what sort of difficulties we would be facing if we obstinately refused to accept that fact.

Remember that sometimes, it is important to let go.

Introspect

Looking within from time to time can help us navigate our lives better. It helps us keep track of our progress, periodically review our goals and re-allocate our resources. 

Investing just 15 minutes before going to bed, for going over the events of the day, can end up making our lives more fulfilling and productive.

If each of us spent a little less time focussing on the lives of others, and a little more on our own, we'll be happier people.