What should I do? Should I drop everything to live a stress-free life in Thailand? Should I do meditation everyday? What are the ways for someone to live a stress-free life :)?
That sounds like it would be a really stressful thing to do...
You probably have a number of good ways to reflect on your priorities, but its very difficult for someone else to tell you how to reflect on those. Most people can only speak to what worked for them, which depends on where they were before, etc.
IMO to start:
Wake up way earlier than you have to. (This changed me into a morning person.) When you have 1-2 hours where you can just sit there calmly, drinking coffee, and not be rushed, you feel ten times better. Many mornings me and my wife wake up and just sit by the fire (that we restart to heat our home) and make coffee. Sometimes she will write, or we will both read, or talk, etc, but often we just sit together for a while and relax. Later on, you can work on being ~productive~ in the a.m. too if you please.
Invite ritual into your life. Spend a time making your home a place you would want to be. A house is a place for having coffee, having conversation, having memories and symbols that give you feeling or inspiration (pictures, objects), how much of their designs do that? How much yours?
This year I'm getting up a little later (maybe average 6:30, to be out the door by 8:30), mostly because I am writing more at night this winter, and its not as cold. I think in the summer I'll switch to writing in the morning more and go back to waking up 5:30-6.
Years ago, I would go to bed at 12-2am. I always used to say most of my best work was done between 10pm-2am. I much prefer it this new way, though past me would have a hard time believing it!
The reality is that if it's important, you'll make time to go to bed earlier. It takes a while for the body to hit restful sleep so early (and using blackout curtains / dawn clocks have been pivotal). For me it was wanting to start working out in a particular morning class... I immediately shifted from midnight to 9:30-10 to give myself the extra time in the morning.
Last year I made the switch and used those unspoilt morning hours to finish a 100k word first draft of a novel, which is a first (heh) for me. 10/10 would not go back to selling my brain's most fertile hours to The Man.
I'd say the only way out is to be aware of whether you have too much stressful stuff on your plate, and either not add more, or proactively remove. Say "no" to more things. Say "yes" a lot less. Manage your commitments. Without this awareness people take on too much stuff, which can only end in tears for everyone involved for several simple reasons:
- If you continue biting off more than you can chew, eventually you will fail to deliver on your obligations, and you'll be too stressed to do your best work
- If you never say "no", you pretty much don't respect yourself, and therefore other people will not respect you. I feel like this affects women more, because they try to be more agreeable and avoid confrontation at all costs. As they say "if you let people walk over you, eventually they will complain you're not flat enough". That is very, very true. I wish I learned this lesson much earlier than I did. My wife still hasn't learned it though.
- As a manager: if you're worried about your career progression, the way to achieve that is by taking a few significant chunks of responsibility, and delivering them with high quality and in at a predictable cadence, NOT taking on a million different things and delivering half baked shit way after it's needed by your team. In the former case you've succeeded and delivered, in the latter case you've failed, and worse, you've made your boss and your team appear like a bunch of idiots. _And_ on top of that your hair is now falling out because you're stressed AF.
I used to start my day stressing. In hindsight, that wasn't healthy.
IMO "Things that will change your life for $100 on amazon" lists are dumb and most people's lives would be improved by the opposite - renting a dumpster!
If you can't do something about something, don't worry about it. If you can, then do, and don't worry about.
I'm sure others will chime in with lots of good ways to manage stress. Therapy, working out, meditation, drugs, etc. Working out is def good in my experience. But I get the most bang from my buck by just plain not worrying. Deadlines and money can make that hard, but I just take the next step, over communicate, and let someone else stress out.
To summarize a bit (and likely leaving out a lot of important details), do stress reducing activity if you can find one that you genuinely enjoy. Meditation is great if you enjoy it, but if you hate it every minute it going to just increase your stress. Same with finding a physical activity. Studies on stress show great results if and only if the subject enjoy and do it volunteerly because they want to do it.
The second way to reduce stress is to have control over things in life, but with a major caveat. A bit cliche, but have a feeling of control for things you can control, do not try control that which you can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. Its a complicated balance.
The third way is to be respected. Studies show that judges, conductors and similar professions have significant lower stress and live longer. Being part of a community and receiving genuine respect is great in order to reduce stress. Don't need to be ones professional life, as family or hobby can achieve similar results.
And the rats in these studies are usually essentially tortured (which is definitely something to avoid).
I highly recommend everyone look at the book "The Upside of Stress", the Ted Talk is here: https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress...
I find that helpful. We all had "actually it wasn't that bad" moments which basically mean "I suffered for no good reason". You can train yourself to anticipate these moments in advance. Imagine that this thing your stressed about fails miserably and the worst possible consequences unfold. What then? What will you do? What if you miss the deadline and the project fails and your boss gets mad and you're fired. What will you do? Will you land on your feet eventually? Maybe you'll actually enjoy some free time and then find a better job or work full time on that thing you keep postponing? What if your relationship deteriorates and your s/o ends up leaves you? Will you land on your feet eventually? Would you manage to find happiness again?
I think that realizing that I'll be alright even in the extreme case, is very reassuring and actually frees me to be more focused on the job at hand and do it better, because I don't need to waste brain-cycles on stressing on what might otherwise feels like a live-or-die situation. Your relationships will be much better if you know deep down that you don't need that specific person to be happy, but that rather its your choice.
Btw, if you feel that you actually wont be ok in some scenario that your stress is warranted! But then you should probably aim to fix that unhealthy attachment because you are probably wrong...
Some people handle stress in positive ways - for example, I find I work much better under some degree of stress (e.g. deadlines) - without stress, I would just procrastinate indefinitely. Under emotional stress, I typically go hard in the gym.
Other people seem to breakdown under stress though, and I can't imagine that's healthy.
Can't tell if the smile means your question is tongue-in-cheek, but assuming it isn't, you likely don't want a stress free life.
Stress, when it is the result of a situation that is tractable, is a helpful signal to help inform one's plan of action. A completely stress free life would arguably be one empty of purpose and direction.
It's stress of the pathological and insurmountable variety - whether internally or externally generated - that is damaging. Find ways to identity and address the causes of that. If those causes can't realistically be removed, consider things like meditation to manage the stress.
As for Thailand, it sounds hot and humid, which to me personally feels stressful, but to each their own ;)
Meditate
Eat healthy
Get enough sleep
Spend time in nature
Avoid long commutes
Avoid social media and the news