Little Ways to Make Yourself Feel Better

Feeling tired, stressed, irritable, or anxious? Modern life gives adults a tough row to hoe, particularly when the weather and world events look grim. If the daily grind seems out of control and almost more than you can bear, you might want to stop and take stock of ways to make yourself feel better.

When we were kids, our parents applied kisses, Band-Aids, and other staple remedies that made our pain bearable and lifted our spirits. Once we moved out and found a full-time job, though, the task of parenting landed squarely on our own shoulders: no one can soothe the adult you except you.

If you need practice in seeing yourself as your own parent, imagine carving out a little piece of yourself that will sit apart from you and monitor you from a distance. The voice of this benevolent spy can help keep you aware of your wants, your needs, your values, and your feelings generally.

Don’t know what you want or need? Consult your feelings for reliable guidance about pain and pleasure. As often as possible during the day, ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now? What do I need to do to take care of myself right now?” If it’s hard to know how you feel—and women in particular tend to tune into everyone else’s feelings before their own—here’s a brief exercise that can help.

Imagine each day as a path you walk that leads from morning to night. Over time, as you develop a routine, the path becomes worn and familiar. You rise at the same time, eat the same things for breakfast, drive the same route to work, and follow the same schedule. As the years pass, you acquire more and more habits. If you want to develop a greater awareness of your feelings, try doing at least a few things differently.

Buy a breakfast food you’ve never tried. Listen to a different radio station. Drive a different way to work. Go to bed a little later or a little earlier. Sample a different sort of book, music, movie, or restaurant.

Leave your beaten path to meet new people. Each time you depart from an established habit, check back with yourself and notice your gut reaction. Positive, negative, or somewhere in between? With practice, your feelings will deliver reliable news bulletins on a regular basis.

Once you have developed an innate awareness of your feelings from one moment to the next, you can cultivate ways of calibrating yourself continuously for peak performance and maximum comfort. Moderate your daily expectations so that you don’t overload yourself and so that you provide yourself with frequent opportunities to take pride in a job well done. Identify things you can do to improve your mood (a poem, a rose, a favorite food) or help your body function more smoothly (a nap or a walk).

Each of us needs to have a smorgasbord of feel-good activities from which we can choose so that we can give ourselves first aid at any hour of the day or night. Your personal list should include something for every occasion, from a five-minute quickie to one or two hours at the spa to a minivacation lasting a whole weekend. The suggestions below will tickle your imagination and get you started on your own personal list of pick-me-ups.