How to reduce stess

I am a very nervous person and dealing with stress can be quite hard for me. When I am really stressed out, anything can fire me up and when that happens it can go in two directions.

The first one includes me picking a fight with someone, usually a family member, and yelling my lungs out until I decide I've had enough, storming into my room then shutting the door with a band loud enough for the neighbours to hear.

The second option is better for people around me, but not as good for me. I tend to stay quiet and take it all in, until I feel this pressure on my chest which makes it hard for me to breath. When this happens I need to either get out and walk around or sleep it off.

When you have a deadline you have to meet, none of this options seem very welcoming so I've worked a lot on how to deal with stress and I want to share this methods with you.

Put situation into perspective. This one seems to work great for me when I am under a lot of pressure when it comes to public speaking or oral exams. The stress I feel in those situations is caused by the thought of being embarrassed in front of larger group of people. The thing that makes me calm is putting the whole thing into perspective and telling myself that in a week or two no one will remember what I said or didn't say. People all have their own problems to worry about and although they may laugh when you say something stupid, most of them won't put much thought into it.

Don't procrastinate. I know procrastination is something hard to deal with, but the absolute worst combination is having a deadline and not being able to stop procrastinating. Believe me, I know. You have no idea how many times I catch myself watching a series or a movie and stressing out about the exam I have the next day. The only thing that will help you in those moments is to have enough self discipline to open a book and start studying.

Eat healthy. When I get stressed out, anxious about something I tend to nibble on whatever snack I can find in the house. Usually it's something sweet that will give me an energy boost and made me feel more hyper than before which is definitely not a good thing when you're trying to reduce stress. Now I replace chocolate with a glass of water or cup of tea, so I keep myself hydrated while studying, but also to stop myself from eating everything I see. Is any of you a nervous eater as well?

Take a day off. You can't keep going. No one can. So whenever you have some spare time, whenever you have a day when you don't necessarily have to rush anywhere, I advise you to take a day off and relax. You will never run out of work, because there's always so much that still has to be done, but you can very easily run out of energy.

I hope any of these helps you, or I hope that at least you found that interesting in anyway and if you made it that far, right to the end of the post I'd like to thank you for taking a moment out of your day to read this. You'll hear more from me at the end of the week.

Stay relaxed! ;)

Ruling out colleges

I know it's Wednesday (or it was when I wrote this) and I usually post on Sundays, but as you may noticed I didn't post anything this weekend. I was in a bad mood, without an idea for a blog post and overall incapable to force myself to write something for you.

The fact I started watching Supernatural didn't help either, but we will talk about the series some other time, if that's fine with you.

Let's catch up on what's been going on, shall we?

This weekend was quite a handful to be honest. Each year in February there is a weekend where you are able to visit colleges and high schools to decide where you want to continue your studies. Every school in the country puts an extra effort into making their school stand out with representation, so they attract as many students as possible.

When I was choosing high school I didn't put much thought into it. I knew where I wanted to go, and choosing high school isn't that big deal after all. Of course some schools have more to offer than the others, in means of sport program and science projects, but the educational program is the same for each school.

Choosing college, however, is stressful and for me a very unpleasant experience so far.

I have already decided what I want to study, and I am probably going to stick to that decision, but I am interested in so many things it's driving me insane. I don't want to have a job in one field for the rest of my life, even thought that's probably going to happen, and I am afraid that I am going to be bored and miserable for the rest of my life, if I make the wrong decision now.

So instead of choosing the right college and career path, I decided I should rule out the ones I am not interest in.

Why would I need to do that if I already choose the college I want to go to?

Because I am influenced a lot by the series I am currently watching or a book I am reading, so I get carried away sometimes. For example, a few weeks ago I read a book where the main character was in love with a vet and I started idolising the job. A week later my dog got sick and I had to take him to the vet.

Guess what happened?

I remembered I have a fear of needles when the vet took a needle out of his drawer and I wasn't able to watch what the vet was doing, because I was feeling sick.

Because I know myself well enough, and I am sure I would convince myself I am able to do a job like that, once I got my hands on a similar book again, I decided to make a list of colleges I shouldn't consider going to.

You know, just in case, I get some great ideas that would turn out not to be that great at the end.

 How did you choose what you want to study? Or are you still figuring it out? And if so, how's that going?

Making history

I have grown up surrounded by football and I always used to play it with my cousins and brother. I was quite a tomboy when I was younger, and it meant a lot to me that they allowed me to play it with them.

So naturally, when I first got to high school, I applied for a girl's football team. At that point I've gown out of my tomboy stage, but still had a burning passion for football. I liked playing it, and I took every opportunity to do so.

When I say I applied for the girl's football team... It wasn't a big deal. There wasn't a selection or anything, and it wasn't all that serious. We had self-organised trainings, but it was more or less just about getting to know each other and playing for fun than actual trainings. Then at the start of the February we had matches against other schools.

We lost all of them. Well, technically we won one match, but that was only because the rival team didn't show up.

A year later a lot of girls applied and a professor decided it would be a good idea to have two separate teams. A good one and a little less good one. That was the year we all went to trainings because the professor would mark down who was training. Girls who were on all the trainings would make it to the good team.

We scored a goal that year, yet we still managed to lose all of the matches with both teams.

This year the girls who started the whole girl's football team went off to college and honestly, I thought the whole thing would just go down the drain. They used to do this funny little posters at the start of the school year to attract more girls to join the team and this year there was none of that. We found out there was supposed to be trainings on Fridays, but none of my friends bothered to go. The truth is we finish school early on Fridays and we didn't want to stick around for another hour or two for the training.

A few months just flew by, and we kept saying to ourselves: "We'll go next week."

We never went and before you know it, it's February. That meant we were supposed to play against other schools.

We went there knowing we were going to lose. I mean, we didn't train, we hardly knew people from the team. It was like a recipe for a disaster.

You can imagine how hyper we were when the ball went into the opponent's goal for the first time. And then for the second time. It felt like Christmas all over again.

I think this might be the first match the girl's team from our school has ever won. I'd like to think I contributed to that at least a little bit, because now I'll be able to tell my grandchildren that I was on the team when we won for the first time.

Now cross your fingers because we have another match coming this week!