This teacher gave his students an amazing check-list on how to beat stress

Trine Jensen-Burke

Modern life comes with a certain dose of stress – unfortunately.

Work, school, parenting, money-worries, trying to make time for relationships and friendships, is it any wonder we can all get a little stressed out from time to time?

And while there is no magic cure to end all stress, we can probably all do better when it comes to managing our stress – and making sure we come out healthy the other side.

The presence of stress in all our lives is probably the reason why this US high school senior’s Twitter post went viral recently – when she shared a very creative list her teacher had given her and her classmates on how to reduce stress.

California-based psychology teacher Brett Phillips has become known among students at his high school for sharing the exhaustive list of 101 ways of keeping a level head each year at the start of the new school year. And the list struck such a chord with senior Alina Ramirez that she posted it on Twitter – where it has currently been retweeted close to 24,000 times and liked more than 29,000 times:

My psychology teacher gave us this paper on how to cope with stress and thought I’d share it ? pic.twitter.com/tqNIZRiMzM

— lina ⚓️ (@lovelyyy_lina) September 2, 2016

The now famous list includes a mixture of practical behaviour like ‘get up 15 minutes earlier’ and ‘prepare for the morning the night before’.

Other tips involve basic organization, like repair anything that doesn’t work properly, make copies of important papers and break large tasks into bite size portions. And some touch upon boosting feelings of positivity and wellbeing including, look up at the stars, learn to whistle a tune, read a poem, read a story curled up in bed and buy yourself a flower.

And the last point on the list, bolded, so you can’t miss it, reads: ‘Freely praise other people.’

After the list went viral, Phillips told Buzzfeed he has compiled the list over the years from textbooks, articles and ‘thinking of things that most people could do to live a less stressful life.’

The response on Twitter has been massive, with people tweeting Alina praise for sharing the list.

One user called @CalliesCoffee said: ‘Wow this is amazing, thank you. Therapists need to us your list as a set of coping skills.

Another simply wrote, ‘Not all heroes wear capes’.

Indeed.

We are thinking of printing this list and hanging it on our fridge.