Stress comes at us from all angles – work, school, family, and even our daily commute. Fortunately, the advice found in this selection of handpicked tips and tricks can be used to constructively assess and respond to the most common sources of stress. Keep calm, carry on, and remember these tips in your time of need.

Try taking up a hobby to relieve some of your stress. A hobby – whether it’s gardening, building model cars, writing, or whatever – can be a great way for you to forget whatever’s bothering you and just relax and have fun for a bit. Whenever you’re feeling stressed out, take some time to work on your hobby.

If you have been eating a lot of junk food lately, you should try cooking a healthy meal or eating a salad. This will help to refresh your body so that you can feel better when you wake up in the morning. Reducing the fat content in your body will help your stress.

Take a mental break. Just daydream for a few minutes. Look outside and find something natural that allows your imagination to roam. Look at the wind blowing through the trees, or the clouds rolling by. Space out for a few minutes and it will help your stress level.

Ahhh…. Who doesn’t love a hot bath? Soaking in a bath is a great stress reliever. But, we don’t always have time for a hot bath. If you don’t have time for a bath, wash your face or even your hands with some hot water and imagine you are soaking your stresses away.

Instead of internalizing all of the stress that you have, write down on paper the things that are bothering you. This is a great way to purge your feelings so that they are not kept inside and causing more anxiety during the course of the day.

Even if you have had a very stressful day, you should never turn to alcohol as a release. While having a couple beers among friends is fun, drinking beer every single day to calm your nerves is bad. Many times alcoholism starts with just one drink and then escalates from there.

If you want to get away from your day to day routine, visit a zoo with a cousin or friend. This will give you the opportunity to examine wildlife in their natural habitat, which can be very soothing. Take a trip to the zoo to limit the anxiety in your life.

Try and figure out how you are currently dealing with stress, so that you can see whether or not there are ways to improve. Try keeping a stress journal for a few weeks. Take a careful look at your journal to understand what you did when a stressful event came about, and if that response was a healthy one. If your stress became worse, try to develop new coping skills until you find things that work for you.

A great tip that can help you keep your stress levels down is to stop relying on your alarm clock to wake up in the morning. Waking up to an alarm clock can make you very stressed out. Learning to wake up naturally is a much better alternative to an alarm clock.

Be aware of any parts of your body that you tend to clench when you are stressed. Keep track of your lower back, shoulders, jaw and fingers. Once you locate the points where you direct your stress, make an extra effort to stretch those body parts to dissipate that stress. This will help to lessen the tension you feel and will help you relax.

A good tip that can help you reduce stress is to stop multitasking and just focus on doing one thing at a time. Multitasking might save you time but you’ll end up with a big headache. Avoid all the stress by just focusing on finishing one task at once.

A great tip that can help you keep your stress down is to invest in a day planner. Day planners are great to have because they allow you to write down important details that you might forget. You’ll be much better organized and your stress levels will go down.

Simplify the things in your life. Start with your bedroom closet, and go from there. Eliminate the many things that you do not use. You will quickly see that many of the things around your house are just clutter and serve absolutely no purpose in your life. De-cluttering will lessen the stress in your life.

So whether you are having trouble coping with a new job, passing a difficult course, or dealing with unforeseen events that make it difficult to go about one’s business with an air of calm — do not be afraid to call upon these tips to help you cope.