Before Thanksgiving Break 2016, my mind was on one track: school, school, school. I would be up all the time doing my homework, never leaving my house, never spending time with my friends (unless we volunteered as a group of course), never talking to my parents. I'd be angry and frustrated when my grades didn't reflect my effort and I'd just stop talking for days, or stop eating. I was stressed beyond comprehension.
But then Thanksgiving Break came.
The first two days were great. My brother had a great birthday, and then we received a call. My grandfather had been sick for a while due to his brain strokes, and we had to leave. We picked up the phone in the morning, and we were on the airplane in the afternoon. I spent twenty-two hours with anxiety, blocked by intense movie watching.
Seeing my grandfather in the intensive care unit changed everything for me.
He used to be a big strong man who took me for ice cream and bought me chocolate and food and never told my parents. He was my best friend. Seeing him not remembering anyone, seeing him not remembering anything beyond 30 seconds made my eyes spin and my throat tighten every day.
As callous as it sounds, he was a result of his own actions. His stressful job, his on and off smoking, his diabetes, his multiple heart attacks and his alarming hypertension should've caused him to take better care of himself, but he never did. He was always rushed and stressed, and he never took any time for himself. Even after he retired he would occupy himself in one big thing or the other, and he would ignore his body's signs.
Seeing him like that made my concerns about homework, community service hours and even the midterms I was probably going to miss, disappear. Seeing him like that encouraged me to take time for myself, for my friends, for my family and for my own health.
I started by taking yoga lessons that were in my neighborhood, and it helped me empty my mind and calm down. Whenever I have an overwhelming amount of work I just breathe, stop and watch an episode of Friends, or a Youtube video. I stopped doing my homework on the bus and started listening to music instead. I even invested in some fidget toys for when I'm extremely stressed.
Doing all of these things has allowed me to be a less stressed person overall (although sometimes it gets to an extreme). I encourage you to take a step back and spend at least thirty minutes of your day not worrying about the things going on in your life. Thirty minutes to collect your thoughts, thirty minutes to take your mind off of things, thirty minutes to destress yourself.
Just thirty minutes to breathe.
