6 stress-busting tips to get you through the summer holidays

If the thought of the summer holidays has you feeling tense rather than zen, these six stress-busting tips will help you feeler calmer and more in control. And the best bit? They’re scientifically proved to work.

Some of you will be counting down the days to the summer holidays; having booked a break, booked in your all-over body wax and bought your new bikini or mankini (we’re not judging, just saying).  However, some of you may not be so excited. Instead, you’re feeling stressed about the next few weeks and what to expect.

Will the flight be cancelled? How will I entertain the kids for eight weeks? What if my back, sack, and crack is cancelled? Stress over the summer holidays is not uncommon, so we at Laughology have put together your stress-busting survival guide with top tips that actually work. 

Feeling stressed isn’t always a bad thing

First things first. It’s important to note that feeling stressed isn’t always a bad thing. It’s a normal part of life to experience stress, and it can at times motivate us, helping us meet the daily demands of home, work and family life. However, it’s important to determine the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ stress, especially as too much bad stress can affect our mood, our body and our relationships – particularly when it feels out of our control. 

Learning to build your resilience continually will help you manage stress as well as understand how it manifests itself in your body. Our FLIP it thinking for building resilience workshop has helped thousands of people develop these skills. 

And while it’s different for everybody, there are signs and symptoms of ‘bad’ stress that tend to fall into three categories:

1. Behavioural - e.g. trouble making decisions, solving problems, concentrating or getting work done
2. Physical - e.g. aches and pains, muscle tension or jaw clenching, stomach or digestive problems, bloating, high blood pressure
3. Emotional - e.g. feeling more irritable than usual, getting angry or frustrated easily, feeling overwhelmed or on edge.

How can we positively manage stress?

Symptoms are your body's way of letting you know you need to do something. Once you’ve identified the symptoms, it’s important to identify ways of managing them. Becoming aware of our own warning signs is a good starting point. This is our body alerting us to take some kind of recovery or rest action. Try these simple stress-busting strategies over the summer break:

1) Declutter

Clutter can represent unfinished business to the brain, and this looming presence of incompleteness can be highly stressful. There has been a lot of research which shows that decluttering can have a beneficial effect on managing stress. In one study, women who described their homes using more positive language had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than women who described their homes as cluttered. 

Try this: Take a few minutes each day to tidy up a different area of your home. Use this time to put things away, recycle, set items aside for charity and invest in smart storage solutions. 

Take five minutes at the end of each day to also declutter your mind by writing down everything that’s on your mind. Use this de-clutter your mind exercise to create an action list with urgent and non-urgent tasks as well as things that can be delegated. Try our useful cheat sheet for this.

2) Have a cold shower

Cold water is said to increase stress tolerance, improve mental resilience and boost levels of the feel-good hormone dopamine, among other positive effects.

As stress and anxiety cause an increase in blood pressure, in theory, submerging or showering in cold water may help bring it down. Cold water may also decrease levels of cortisol. If you can’t make it to a body of water, you can reap all the benefits from your shower, either by including a quick blast of cold at the end of your usual shower or jumping in for a couple of minutes whenever stress threatens to overwhelm.

Try this: Take the kids to a cold-water swimming venue – exercise your happiness hormones and the kids in one go. If you don’t have kids, take yourself and maybe a friend or join a cold water swimming club.

3) Limit mobile phone use

Lockdown led to a huge surge in screen time, with UK adults using their phones for up to 40% of the day. But having our phones constantly at arm’s reach means we are continually raising our levels of the stress hormone cortisol, impacting our health. 

Try this: Have regular ‘phone detoxes’ and use the summer as a starting point for this. Take a few hours where you leave your phone behind. Use this as a way to spend more quality time with your partner, friends, or family.

Create fun with it - encourage friends and family to leave phones in one place and the first person to go to theirs has to do a forfeit or give money to a charity. Most importantly leave your phone in a separate room at night and do not look at it first thing in the morning. 

4) Practise self-care

An often-overlooked part of a busy schedule is self-care. Those who neglect it are at risk of deeper levels of unhappiness, low self-esteem, and feelings of resentment. Self-care helps us cope in the moment, restoring feelings of calm and control, particularly following challenging experiences, and gives us a protective buffer against future curveballs.

Begin by looking at how you approach everyday activities such as showering, dressing and eating, as well as activities like yoga, breathing practices and journaling. It’s not about spending hours at the gym but can be as simple as going for a short walk every day, creating 10-minutes for yourself before or after your morning routine, being curious to learn and showing yourself compassion and appreciation.

Try this: Think about 3 things you’ve done at the end of the day you’re proud of or three things you’re appreciative of. You can do this with your family too and make it a regular part of the end of your day.

5) Connect

One survey, commissioned by Schulstad Bakery Solutions, found that some of the top 50 things that make Brits feel the most content is spending time with family or loved ones and laughing with each other.

And it’s little wonder – socialising (as well as things like hugging and hand-squeezing) increases levels of a hormone called oxytocin that decreases anxiety levels and makes us feel more confident in our ability to cope with stressors. We benefit enormously when our loved ones acknowledge and validate our feelings. Even a quick chat on the phone during a stressful period can remove you from a situation and help you to gain more perspective. 

Try this: If your loved ones are far away, have a video call and play a fun game or talk about the things you remember that make you laugh. Connecting with others, even virtually, boosts our feelings of connectedness. If you can meet people face to face, do this at least once every other week.  

6) Move more 

It’s well-documented that exercise is a powerful stress-reliever as it increases feel-good hormones called endorphins. But you don’t need to be pounding the gym to feel the benefit – in fact, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, just five minutes of movement is all that’s needed to feel a difference.

Try this: Exercise at your desk. Set a timer to get up every hour and do 2 minutes of stretching, balancing activities or walking about. Doing something that feels manageable will feel easier and add 16 minutes of activity to your working day. A simple stretch has profound effects on stress levels, mood, energy, mental clarity, digestive health and immune health.

Only got a minute? Try these 3 super-speedy stressbusters 

• Box breathingBreathe in for three seconds, hold for three, breathe out for three and hold for three. If helpful draw a box in your mind or with your finger in the air, using the breath to draw the length of the lines.
• Shoulder roll Research shows that a tall upright spine lifts our mood and diminishes fatigue. With your fingertips on your shoulders, breathe in and sweep your elbows up. As you exhale, take your elbows back and down. Do six of these to feel lighter and brighter.
• Grounding exerciseUse your senses and notice five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste/or are grateful for. This can be used to help you get through moments of stress and anxiety, and calm your mind.

Invite Laughology into your workplace to talk about more practical stress-busting, positive feeling techniques. Our mental health and wellbeing workshop is full of ideas and ways to help your teams take control of their stress and increase their resilience.