Twenty years from today, stress was a rare visitor in daily lives of our previous generation. Today, it is not an exaggeration if I say stress has become part and parcel of everyone’s life irrespective of age, gender, and profession. No wonder we all wait for “weekend” to take a break from it so that we get ourselves prepared to face a new week filled with all this again! Have you ever thought why we crave for weekend when weekdays and weekends both are part of our lives? Shouldn’t we be living or enjoying our life, no matter what the day of week is? Well, that is because maybe we forget that we are supposed to take life, live it, and enjoy it as it is. In short, we must improve the quality of life and prepare ourselves for challenges that might come to us in future rather than surviving each day waiting for it to pass.

There are numerous ways in which you can enhance your life, change little things you do in your day to day life, to make it better and meaningful. However, here we are listing our top two powerful tools which not only improve your quality of life, but also enhance your visualization skills and helps you focus on things better. 

Journaling

Journaling is a simple act of writing few words describing how your day was and things you want to note down, anywhere (preferably in a notebook) at the beginning or the end of your day. Why journaling? This practice makes you revisit what happened today or previous day, make a note of any remarkable things, any lessons you have learnt, mistakes you want to correct. It is like the little revision you do before your slip test. When you write your thoughts on a piece of paper, you focus on it and reinforce on it. You need not write details of specific incidents but write a summary of it or a pointer which probably only you may understand. The format is completely up to you. So is the time when you do it. 

There are many benefits to this little tool including and not limited to:

1. Reduces mental stress and calms down your anxiety. When anxious, write it away!
2. Helps you investigate your thoughts and spend some time on them.
3. Helps manage depression as this is one form of expressive writing.

Doodling

Doodling in simple words means just drawing anything when your mind is occupied with something else. Remember how we drew pictures of our lecturers or friends during a boring session? This is a great and powerful tool and a stress burster. Who doesn’t love adding a little fun element in your everyday life? The bonus is you get better at creativity and can focus on bigger picture too. As with journaling, there is no rule as to when and what you doodle. Some people prefer doodling away how their day was crisply in a picture. Some other people just spend some time doodling some flowers, cartoons etc. No matter what you draw, you will experience the following benefits in your life:

1. Doodling improves your concentration and helps you forget your stress at least for a brief time.
2. Helps you with psychological distress and keeps your creative juices flowing.

What are you waiting for? Pick your favourite tool and start doing them today to improve the quality of your life and thereby enjoying each moment.