With a mere twenty-four hours to a day, we’ve got to be judicious about how we spend our time. After a long, stressful workday, it can be difficult to relax and do much more than veg-out on the couch.

How do you decompress?

In times of anxiety, many people turn to unhealthy stress relievers like cigarettes, booze, junk food and drugs. If this sounds like you, you’ll want to know about the following healthy alternatives that can help you decompress. Some are rather obvious. Others may be new to you. They’re all worth trying.

Why should you decompress naturally?

Science proves that unrelieved stress can lead to a host of horrible health problems. Headaches, insomnia and inability to focus on the task at hand are not even the worst of them. According to Mayo Clinic, unremitting stress can cause heart disease, obesity and depression.

Prescription anxiety relievers such as Xanax and Valium may provide quick, temporary relief of major stressors, but they do little if anything to alleviate the cause of stress. If you’d rather use mental brain tricks to soothe your anxiety, listen to music, play an instrument, stare at a fish tank or take a long hot soak in a bubble bath. If you didn’t want to take prescription medicine, you could consider a natural alternative such as kava, which you can find out more about over on kavaguides.com, to help you to de-stress and relax into the evening. Better yet, do all of the above, then make some art. If you’ve got the skills, draw a free-form design, knit a scarf, throw a clay pot or weave something wonderful to relieve a lot of stress.

When days are super stressful

Some days cause more stress than others. When it happens to you, you may have to pull out some heavy-duty stress relievers. Art is one of them. Music is another. In fact, art and music are among the most effective ways to decompress after a hard day, says WorkPulse magazine. Turn on your car stereo as soon as you get in the vehicle and sing along with your favorite music all the way home.

Looking forward to enjoying your hobby at home can make the work day go faster. Once you get home, dive into your preferred hobby with gusto. It doesn’t matter if you like video games, calligraphy or computer programming –a hobby is the ideal way to segue your mind and body between the workplace and home. If you want a challenge, for more words searches there are lots of puzzles out there to check out.

Mandalas are geometric patterns with ancient origins, and they’re said to create feelings of calmness and serenity in those who create and gaze upon them. Apalon offers a nice little mandala-maker app that you can get at Google Play. Click here to download the app for free. Choose to stay within a cool color group, or illustrate your mandala with the golden light colors of the sun and stars. Nobody’s sure why, but working with colors can be a magnificent sort of mood-mender.

Turn off your computers and phones before tucking into bed at night. You’ll sleep better without all the blue light around. The more refreshed you are in the morning, the likelier you are to sail through another stressful day.

Sebastian Sykes refuses to be stressed for long, the same goes for being angry or upset about something which just isn’t important in the bigger picture. He shares his life embracing tips around the web.