Dear Extremely Stressed Friend,

If you're like me, then your mind is never completely calm. No matter what's going on in my life today, I will always stress about tomorrow. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Me too. Do you want to know the greatest piece of advice that I've ever received when it comes to balancing all of my obligations?

Chill, friend. Just chill.

I understand that you're worried about something and you can't force your mind to be quiet no matter how hard you try, however continuously pushing yourself when you have no energy left to push with is not healthy for you. In the United States, 77% of people regularly experience negative physical symptoms because of stress. Stress can have huge impacts on your personal life, as well as cause fatigue, irritability, anger, headaches, and changes in appetite. In other words, stress really sucks and the worst thing that you can do for yourself is push yourself too hard when you have absolutely no strength to keep going. If you place stress on your body by moving forward too quickly, you risk the change of regressing and falling backwards.

As a student, there aren't many ways in which to halt stress from coming into your life. We all have ungodly workloads sometimes and there's no way to avoid them. However, there are a lot of ways that you can manage your workload without causing harm to your mind or your body. Firstly, manage your time. I know what you're thinking. You've had someone shoving this time management thing down your throat since the second grade when your elementary school gave everyone a planner and forced you to get it signed every night as homework. I'm sure the constant nagging has gotten annoying at times, but maybe it's been such an important topic because time management is an efficient way to keep yourself oriented. Forcing you to keep an agenda in elementary school was probably the greatest thing the public school system ever did for you. Write down your goals, manage them wisely, and get them done efficiently. Take some time and meditate. Being still and quiet is actually pretty difficult (especially if your mind is always racing), but by taking a few moments and reflecting on your day, you could potentially save yourself a lot of unnecessary stress.

Above all else, take a day to just chill out. Take a nap. The Earth will still be spinning when you wake up. Mental health days aren't only fun and refreshing, but they're also necessary if you're planning on keeping your head from exploding. No one has the mental or physical capacity to work all of the time, and taking a day to gather yourself every once in a while is totally condoned by the rest of the population.

Chilling out is important. Take some time for yourself some time soon.