Even dream jobs can get stressful sometimes. Anxiety, muscle tension and other common symptoms of workplace stress shouldn’t disrupt your quality of life. Everyone deserves a stress-free routine, especially when your lifestyle choices specifically help the environment. Use these eco-friendly ways to alleviate workplace stress and start feeling more at ease, no matter what’s happening at work.
1. Plant Local Flowers
Stress in the workplace can often affect your life, even after you’ve left the office. One way to find relief, following a particularly stressful day at work, is to do a little gardening.
Gardening has numerous health benefits, including stress relief. Being able to get outdoors, do some work with your hands and tend to your garden can be extremely beneficial. It takes your mind off work and onto something else. In addition, people who adore the planet can give back through their gardening habits.
Try planting flowers local to your hometown. They’ll better support the ecosystem than non-native plants and they’ll provide what bees and insects need to thrive.
Even adding small amounts of greenery to your surroundings can provide psychological benefits that gradually ease stress. Start with planting a few flowers, plants or herbs in your backyard, or add some new flowers to indoor or patio pots, your brain will thank you for the more peaceful surroundings.
2. Bring Binoculars to Work
You don’t need to wait until you’re at home to alleviate workplace stress. Step away from your desk with a pair of trusty binoculars. You can spot birds while on your break, if your job is near spaces with trees. It’ll distract you from your worries and make stressors less overwhelming.
You can even double your impact by sending your pictures to publications focused on environmental causes. It’s an excellent way to turn your hobby into social activism about how the planet is worth protecting.
3. Go for a walk
Going for a walk is one of the simplest, yet most sustainable, ways to relieve stress. No matter what time of day, or what you’re in the middle of, if you’re starting to feel a little overwhelmed or kind of stressed out, go for a walk.
Get up from your desk, go outside and take a little walk. Look around you. Take a few deep breaths. Put your attention on the beautiful trees, the birds flying overhead, the clouds in the sky, even the buildings or vehicles you walk past. The goal is to focus your attention outward, away from your work and onto the environment around you.
Often times, going for a walk can help calm your mind. It may also help you come up with a solution to resolve any problem you face. Give it a try and see.
4. Attend a Virtual Therapy Session
Although joining a new hobby club or planning a vacation can be fun, they might only temporarily numb some of your recurring internal stressors. Therapy is a much more direct way to help your mind feel better and heal.
Sign up for virtual sessions with a local therapist to make your appointments eco-friendly. You won’t burn fossil fuels to reach your therapist’s office, giving you more peace of mind.
If your health care provider didn’t cover therapy in the past, that could change this year. A recent update to the federal 2023 budget requires insurers to provide three cost-free behavioral health visits each year. You could access therapy in an eco-friendly way to constructively deal with the root of your stress.
5. Volunteer to Pick Up Trash
Sometimes taking action is the best way to overcome stress. Worries gain power when you feel helpless. Volunteering to improve your local environment will remind you, you can cause immediate positive change, no matter what challenges you face at work.
Find a local group and join their efforts to pick up trash in local parks. You’ll be able to remove garbage capable of polluting waterways and killing animals, while relieving your stress with more physical movement. Just ensure you stay hydrated with electrolytes, and wear sunscreen to protect your health, while working outside.
6. Enjoy Some Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy can be an environmentally-friendly way to boost your mood, alleviate stress, reduce anxiety and put you in a better state of mind overall.
Unfortunately, traditional fragrance diffusers can contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that pollute the air. So, you’ll want to find an eco-friendly company capable of producing a relaxing aroma in all-natural essential oils. These companies get their scents directly from plants, instead of harmful chemicals. Be cautious, though, because corporations can end up using several pounds of plants to make one product, requiring the destruction of natural habitats to create sizable agricultural farms.
Small business owners in your hometown will usually make smaller products. They’ll need fewer plants to create the scents you love, so it’s worth checking out their venues or virtual storefronts. A bottle of lavender or chamomile oil could reduce your daily anxiety, if you diffuse them once a day.
Shopping locally also prevents you from funding the transportation industry. The local essential oil artist won’t need fleet vehicles to burn fossil fuels while carrying their essential oils from the production facility to a storefront. Everything happens in your hometown, making it easier to support the environment with your purchase.
Alleviate Your Workplace Stress
Job-related stress doesn’t have to invade your personal life. Use these ideas to take care of your worries while you’re on or off the clock. Simple tricks like getting more active in your community or picking up birdwatching could help you alleviate workplace stress and enjoy life more without compromising your eco-friendly lifestyle.
