Advances in neuroscience have enabled us to understand how to rebalance our nervous system quickly.

Ancient spiritual practices, like meditation and body scans, have been proven useful for psychological issues.

These tips are easy to learn and can often diminish stress and elevate our mood in under 15 minutes.

The methods in this post are quite discrete and can usually be done without anyone else noticing.

Life can feel hard at times, and most of us want a break from stress. But we do not necessarily have the time or opportunity to do one of the tried and true methods, such as taking a vacation, going for a walk in nature, or socializing with friends.

The good news is that advances in neuroscience over the last 20 years have helped psychologists identify simple, low cost ways to lift our mood that take under 15 minutes. These all use what we have learned about our brain and body/mind system to directly and quickly rebalance us wherever we are, whenever we want.

These tools can be used with psychotherapy or on your own.

I teach these methods to my clients as self-care tools. One that I included below was just invented by a creative client to support herself between therapy sessions. I have permission to share it.

I enjoy finding ways that make happiness easier to achieve. To that end, I have been collecting tips that quickly, and somewhat effortlessly, shift our mind away from our worries and lift our mood. You can think of these activities as easy, affordable, mini-vacations that can quickly reset your mind/body system.

We know from neuroscience research that most humans find being out in nature calming (Bratman et al., 2015). But did you know that just looking at appealing pictures of nature can help reset your mood and restore your previously depleted ability to focus (Ulrich et al., 1991)?

Try it for yourself. Choose some pretty nature images and load them on your........

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