Danny Penman and Mark Williams: The gloomy days of January can be the most miserable and stressful of the year, but it doesn’t have to be this way. If you follow this ten step guide to destressing your life, then the next few weeks just might become the most serene and fulfilling ones of the year.
One step should be carried out on each of the next 10 days. They’re based on the ideas found in the international best-seller “Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World.”
The book uses a program based on mindfulness meditation developed by us at Oxford University in the United Kingdom to relieve anxiety, stress, exhaustion and depression. Mindfulness has proved in some clinical trials to be at least as effective as drugs or counseling for dealing with these conditions.
The ten steps described in the article are:
Day 1: Eat some chocolate
Day 2: Go for a short walk
Day 3: Take a three-minute breathing space
Day 4: Do something pleasurable
Day 5: The intensely frustrating line meditation
Day 6: Set up a mindfulness bell
Day 7: The ten-finger gratitude exercise
Day 8: Do the sounds and thoughts meditation
Day 9: Reclaim your life
Day 10: Go to the movies
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