Becoming a better person is a goal we strive for every day.

By becoming a better person, you’re able to forgive your own mistakes and grow to be happier, and healthier. However, it’s difficult to maintain this goal with the pressure to keep up with friends, family, and especially school. I’m nowhere near perfect but these simple changes have helped me become more patient, articulate and understanding.

Here are some ways to relieve stress and be a happier person.

Journals are a place where your thoughts can be secured. 

1. Journaling 

I won’t lie, at first, writing down your feelings in a notebook will feel very Disney-Channelish. Yet, nothing will make you feel more calmed and relieved than this. The ability to say exactly how you feel and be comfortably vulnerable within a couple of pages is completely worth it. Journaling helps with developing the way you write, reaching deeper, complex thoughts, and quickly articulating how you feel and think.

Your journal doesn’t just have to be about your feelings. I glue in mementos that my friends give me, I write poems, stories, or any interesting idea or question to think about. Your journal is yours, make it personal. Let it make you happy.

Open up to those around you as they can be the ones that can help you the most.

2. Talking

This one is pretty obvious but talking to other people about how stressful or bad you’re feeling helps like no other. We can get too caught up in gossip or work that we don’t have meaningful conversations. Being able to connect with another person on a deeper level about how difficult your situation is, can better your friendship, yourself and the other person. Here is where you find true friends. You find your people that are willing to hear you out and are willing to be honest with you. This also allows to get your thoughts off the pages of your journal and see other ways of seeing. To recognize other perspectives is something we should strive for because it allows us to be more understanding and fair.

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.” -Charles Dickens

Lets channel our inner Bob Ross. 

3. Art

Indulge yourself into the arts so you can do something you really love doing. Make it a hobby. I find writing to be very difficult but the gratification and pride from finishing a story is so worthwhile. Being able to effectively convey abstractly or literally how you feel through a poem or a painting is good for learning patience and holding up hobbies. It pulls you away from the pressure of everything and indulges you into doing something that makes you happy. You are able to learn new ways of saying how you feel and be able to show that same vulnerability to others without them even knowing it. You can also just have fun. I love ceramics for the control it gives me, it doesn’t have to be a michelangelo sculpture. It can be however I want it to be. You don’t have to make a masterpiece; you just have to do something you love.

Do the things that allow you to feel free. If it’s watching a movie, or making one. We tend to lose sight of what makes us laugh in the midst of stress, so if this article can do anything. Let it inspire you. Do what makes you happy. Allow yourself to become a better person.