I was asked to give you some tips on how to relax which I'm going to do right now. This is the portion in which I tell you how to enjoy your social isolation and how to bring down your feelings of anxiety should any arise. It's tense times I know.

Number one, you're gonna have to take breaks from social media and the news. You just have to. Very important. You don't have to take the whole afternoon off because there's so much happening it really probably pays to dip in every now and then just in case something important happens. But you can take an hour off. Yeah you could take two hours off. So build that into every day. Make sure you get a little alone time without the news of any kind.

Likewise if you're trying, if your goal is removing tension and relaxing and it should be a goal. And by the way you should be, your full-time job, when I think what my job is you know for my life in terms of the selfish part of what I do not the things I might do for other people but in terms of taking care of myself. I see my job as removing my stress. That's like the main job. And there are a hundred ways to do it and many things I would do to get that done including you know maybe completing my work on time. But everything is really about my energy and my stress. Energy and stress being related. If you have too much stress it hurts your energy etc. So you want to avoid anything that puts you in the wrong frame of mind.

So don't do tense movies. Don't do comedies? Don't do music that you know is headbanger music even if it's your favorite music. Just take a break from any music, any music that's provocative or is trying to work you into some kind of emotional state that's not the one you want. All right now if you're gonna listen to classical music you know that's probably fine. But anything that'll put you in the wrong frame of mind or even anything that reminds you of you know that past boyfriend or girlfriend, anything like that. Just avoid it because that's all just polluting your mind at a time when it's hard enough to keep it straight.

The thing you should do is obviously avoid caffeine. Yeah after a certain part of the day everybody's different. So by now you probably know your reaction. But more than ever if it's your habit to have a cup of coffee late in the afternoon maybe rethink that just for now. You know go for decaf. Yeah it's easy to get into habits and then not realize that your habit is no longer suited to the current situation. So if your habit was I drink coffee you know five o'clock at night never bothered me before but maybe today it does. So just give a thought that you might want to change some of your habits to optimize for this situation.

So definitely get enough sleep. That's the main thing. If you get enough sleep everything's easier and you can solve problems easier. Things don't bother you. You feel better. So your stress will just naturally be better if you get more sleep. So that's just an obvious. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of light daily exercise. As in making sure that you literally get exercise every day. There's such a difference in what that does to your stress level. And again emphasis on the light. If the reason you don't exercise is because you just don't like you know beating yourself up and you know you're not really that no pain no gain kind of person. I'm not even talking about that. I'm literally just talking about taking a nice leisurely walk as far as you want to go. You know whatever your body tells you is right. So emphasis on the light part just for stress reduction. This is not about building muscles, not about losing weight at the moment. Your top priority is just chilling out. So optimize your exercise for that objective to chill. And light exercise, walks, are great.

Next I usually make it a point to take my lunch as me time and I've always done this. This is a longtime habit. So a lot of people will say I have so much to do I'm going to eat and at the same time I'm going to be doing some work so I'll multitask. I get that. Sometimes we have to do that. But man you should try as hard as you can not to. Give yourself that 45 minutes whatever it is that's just you, your food, your beverage, and maybe something on your phone that's not reminding you of anything tense. You know you're not doing emails necessarily. You're texting a friend, watching a YouTube that's funny, that sort of thing. But just leave the world behind for a little while.

Now I've given you lots of sleep tips about make sure that you use the bed just for sleeping and adult behavior. But you also want to get your oxytocin up. Oxytocin is the drug or the chemical that your body produces when you have close personal relationships that are good. So if you're making love with somebody you love or you're hugging somebody or you're just canoodling with somebody in a close intimate way. So if there's somebody like that in your life, somebody that you can spoon, spoon it up. So you should spoon for medicinal reasons.

If you're gonna watch a TV show watch a comedy. Get in spooning position on the couch. Now if your partner is not watching this right now you should go to them and say baby I know we usually sit in different chairs and I know usually that's fine but this is like getting lost in this snowstorm. You might have to use your body warmth but it's not a body warmth you need. It's the oxytocin. It's that feeling of being close to somebody. So your assignment tonight, be it in bed or be it on your couch, this is spooning it up. Spoon it and watch how you feel and watch your stress just melt away.

So those are your tips. I might think of some more tips later. But don't think too much about the bad news. Think about the best possible outcomes. Fill your mental shelf space with good thoughts so that the bad ones don't have room. Just think of it as the shelf has to be filled because you can't think of nothing. You could try but it doesn't work. So if there's going to be something on your mental shelf space you be the author. Put stuff on it until it's all full. Keeps the bad thoughts out. That's your trick for tonight.