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While there are obviously some lifestyles and occupations that are more stressful than others, we all may feel stressed out at different points in our lives. Whether you are a business person, a busy mom, a student, or none of that, I have picked a hundred stress relief quotes to help you relax!
But how can inspirational quotes help me release stress, you ask? They are just words…
Well, each of these 100 thoughts might give you a fresh perspective on your own situation. Each sentence reflects the opinion of some wise person who surely knows something about managing stress. I mean, people famous enough to be quoted usually have a very close relationship with stress and have a thing or two to recommend the rest of us.
Imagine talking to a hundred people about your life and all the stressful things in it! I’m sure someone would say something that will give you food for thought or even an immediate tension relief. It might even be a funny joke that makes you giggle and relax. So let’s hear what all these guys have to say, shall we?
Can you be stressed out for no reason?
If you feel stressed without any apparent reason, you can simply be overwhelmed. Whether by social media, by having too much on your plate, or by your own worrying thoughts, it’s easy to get yourself into anxiety when everything is actually fine.
Spending a big chunk of each day reading news or scrolling social media will definitely affect your mental health. Even if you are generally satisfied with your life, constantly seeing only highlights of others’ lives often makes you feel the fear of missing out. If you start comparing yourself with others all the time, try cutting your screen time and strengthening your self-image with positive affirmations like these.
Overworking is another typical cause of feeling stressed all the time, and it doesn’t have to do anything with your job. Stop for a moment and ask yourself whether it’s humanly possible to fit all your tasks in your awake hours, or you are putting too much on your plate. Sometimes learning to say No to people and things can save you a lot of stress! If that’s your reason, cut yourself some slack, clarify your priorities, and cut down on responsibilities.
Finally, a common problem in the 21st century that makes us feel constantly anxious is overthinking. For this, I have some affirmations you can choose from depending on your situation:
- 20 Positive Affirmations For Anxiety And Stress Management
- 40 Positive Affirmations For Inner Beauty, Peace, And Strength
- 80 Positive Affirmations For Confidence And Self Esteem
- 40 Positive Affirmations To Get Rid Of Self-Doubt For Good
- 100 Positive Affirmations For Overcoming Fear And Staying Strong
- 7 Positive Affirmations For Self-Care And Self-Acceptance
Of course, sometimes there is a reason for feeling stressed out that you are just unaware of. Here is a good list of things that commonly cause stress, so maybe look through it and see if anything rings a bell. If you need help figuring this out and/or dealing with your stress, texting or calling an online therapist might be a good idea.
In any case, here is a bunch of great quotes on the subject of stress relief, many of which are from people whose life is or was extremely stressful. I feel like there is a lot we can learn from them, so let’s dive right in and try to relax!
Best stress relief quotes to relax
1. Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff. – Robert Eliot
2. Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself. – Hermann Hesse
3. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, distracted and out of sorts. Turn your attention to your breath, inhale, exhale, and listen to the sound and movement of your everyday breath flowing softly in and out through your nose. You will reclaim your calm and refocus on what matters. – Ntathu Allen
4. Every single thing we do stems from the quality of our mind. Our lives are reflections of our state of mind. Minds can be chaotic and stressful, or peaceful and grateful. It’s a simple choice we make in every single moment. – Todd Perelmuter
5. Remember that stress doesn’t come from what’s going on in your life. It comes from your thoughts about what’s going on in your life. – Andrew J. Bernstein
6. Forgive yourself for how you chose to survive. Forgive yourself for the desires you judged harshly. Forgive yourself for indulging in things that took up your time but didn’t fulfill you. Forgive yourself for declaring yourself as someone you’re not. Forgive yourself for your chosen avenues of negative expression. Forgive yourself for all the times you didn’t add value to others. Forgive yourself for what you discovered about yourself that you didn’t like. Forgive yourself for whatever ugliness you saw in yourself. Forgive yourself for not correcting what you think you should have. Forgive yourself for the parts you couldn’t respect. Forgive yourself for all these judgments. Forgive yourself for not being able to forgive yourself before. – Emily Maroutian
7. You have the possibility, in this very moment, to change your relationship to the world by relaxing, enjoying being present, breathing, and living this small moment before sleep, not in stress but in the pleasure of being alive. – Delbert Curtis
8. A great way to get rid of stress is, every once in a while, do something totally different and unexpected without any prior planning. – Franklin Gillette
9. When you find yourself stressed, ask yourself one question: Will this matter in 5 years from now? If yes, then do something about the situation. If no, then let it go.
Catherine Pulsifer
10. Reconnect to what makes you happy and brings you joy. If there is something that used to make you happy which you have stopped doing, do it again. Seek to find deeper meaning and significance rather than living on the surface. – Susan C. Young
11. We have now become so fragile that anything and anyone can disturb our mental peace. A huge part of our life gets lost in chasing useless objects and fighting pointless battles. It’s time to slow down and reflect. – Pulkit Sharma
12. Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answers. – William S. Burroughs
Stress relief products worth checking out
Quotes and reading are always great to release tension but sometimes you are so stressed that any little source of extra relaxation can be beneficial.
Here I picked a few things that might work for you when you need to distract yourself and relax!
Stress relief digital products by UtterlyPositive
Stress relief products from Amazon
Interested in journaling?
Funny stress relief quotes
According to health professionals, the process of laughing lowers stress levels in a variety of different ways! So let your hair down and allow yourself to giggle while reading these funny quotes for stress relief. Let’s beat stress with endorphins!
13. Relax. No one else knows what they’re doing either. – Ricky Gervais
14. Stress is an important dragon to slay – or at least tame – in your life. – Marilu Henner
15. He was always in a hurry to get where he was not. – Leo Tolstoy
16. When you’re stressed, you eat ice cream, cake, chocolate and sweets. Why? Because stressed spelled backwards is desserts.
17. Money can’t buy happiness, but it certainly is a stress reliever. – Besa Kosova
18. If you don’t want stress, detach yourself from the stressors. – Genica JC
19. Only 8% of our worry will come to pass. 92% of our worry is wasted. Don’t panic! – Mark Gorman
20. Step outside for a while – calm your mind. It is better to hug a tree than to bang your head against a wall continually. – Rasheed Ogunlaru
21. Those who have no rest will rest in a morgue. – Tamerlan Kuzgov
22. Stress is unnecessary and unnecessary stress is very unnecessary. – TemitOpe Ibrahim
23. Do not rent out your brain to stress and fear, they do not pay. – Rajesh Walecha
Relatable quotes about stress and anxiety
24. Most of us feel isolated and paranoid during stressful times. We feel alone in the wilderness. – Patricia Cornwell
25. Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it. – Kahlil Gibran
26. Somewhere between handling challenges, taking care of business, and juggling responsibilities, you may have lost pieces of yourself which you long to recover. Perhaps they were buried and forgotten long ago. Rediscovering is more than just being reminded of these golden treasures. It is being able to excavate your riches by pulling them out, polishing them off, and allowing them to shine again. – Susan C. Young
27. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. – J.K. Rowling
28. Most people’s minds are almost always too busy for them to feel their skins being caressed by the wind or the sun. – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
29. You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. – Eleanor Roosevelt
30. There are thousands of causes for stress, and one antidote to stress is self-expression. That’s what happens to me every day. My thoughts get off my chest, down my sleeves and onto my pad. – Garson Kanin
31. When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.
Winston Churchill
32. You are a living, breathing, organic being. Of course you can feel pain, of course you can feel hurt, of course it feels overwhelming sometimes as the jagged, rough, and hard world outside bumps up against your soft skin. You are not a machine that rams through each experience, performing tasks with no emotions. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive. Be kind to this soft creature as it learns its way around a busy and loud world. Be easy with yourself because some days you’ll be the only one who is. But that’s okay because you’re the only one that makes a real difference. – Emily Maroutian
33. The truth is that stress doesn’t come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about your circumstances. – Andrew Bernstein
34. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax. – Mark Black
Chill quotes to stress less
35. Relax. Just relax and have fun doing what you’re doing. Don’t worry so much about being results-oriented. Just commit yourself to the moment. – John Goodman.
36. Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly. – Proverb
37. Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths. – Etty Hillesum
38. Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. – Oprah Winfrey
39. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. – James Allen
40. Stress acts as an accelerator: it will push you either forward or backward, but you choose which direction. – Chelsea Erieau
41. In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived. How well we have loved. How well we have learned to let go. – Jack Kornfield
42. Don’t be in a hurry to achieve your dreams. Take a day to play with your kids and relax – your dreams will still be there tomorrow. – Lindsey Rietzsch
43. Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
John Lubbock
44. Self-care is how you take your power back. – Lalah Delia
45. Give your stress wings and let it fly away. – Terri Guillemets
Quotes for someone who is always stressed
This can be you, or someone close to you. In any case, that’s a lot of good advice here. Feel free to share it with a stressed person you know who might need to hear it!
46. Tomorrow’s flower is today’s seed. And it’s okay that the seed is not a flower yet. It’s okay that it has a bit of a process to undertake before it blooms. There’s nothing wrong with the seed right now. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be in this moment. And so are you. – Emily Maroutian
47. Make time to relax, you are legally entitled to take a break, so what’s stopping you? – Dee Waldeck
48. Simply put stress is reacting negatively to perceived unpleasant things in your life. When you learn to be aware of how you are breathing, it becomes easier for you to stop stress and reclaim your calm. – Ntathu Allen
49. Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset. What is anything in life compared to peace of soul? – Francis de Sales
50. When we approach a circumstance already stressed out, we are setting ourselves up for misery before we begin. Instead, refuse to allow your circumstances to dictate how you are going to feel. You may not be able to control the situation, but you can control how you respond to it. – Tony Warrick
51. Whether you feel your absolute best or your absolute worst today, you still deserve comfort, care, and love. You still deserve the kindness of strangers and the compassion of good friends. You still deserve hearty belly laughs and a good night’s sleep. You still deserve warm baths and a night out to your favorite restaurant. You still deserve those little moments that make you feel glad you were there to witness them. Regardless of how you feel, you will always remain a deserving being worthy of the best moment that is possible for you right here and right now. – Emily Maroutian
52. The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
Sydney J. Harris
53. I promise you nothing is as chaotic as it seems. Nothing is worth diminishing your health. Nothing is worth poisoning yourself into stress, anxiety, and fear. – Steve Maraboli
54. The day she let go of the things that were weighing her down, was the day she began to shine the brightest. – Katrina Mayer
55. The worst possible approach to a problem is waiting until it becomes overwhelming or irreversible, and that is exactly what many people do. They put dealing with stress on the backburner until they start to experience all the worst symptoms of stress, and by then, it may be too late! – Gudjon Bergmann
56. Don’t cluster too much plans to do within a relatively minimum time. As beginner, you must not cut your coat according to your elder brother’s size. Know your limit. – Israelmore Ayivor
Quotes about things that release stress
There are many things you already have in your life that may help with stress relief. If you ever stop to acknowledge all the wonderful things you have to be thankful for, you’ll probably find a couple.
Also, the process of expressing gratitude is a good stress reliever as well! I challenge you to try and see for yourself!
In the meantime, see these quotes as hints to find some natural ways to release stress!
57. Sometimes, the best therapy is a long drive and music.
58. I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve. – Montesquieu
59. Don’t underestimate the power of resting. It builds you back unlike anything. – Hiral Nagda
60. If you want to have peace on this planet full of stress and turmoil, go to a tree, and hug it. Go to them as if, you are visiting a temple or church. Walk barefoot and touch them in reverence with both your hands. – Banani Ray
61. Nothing beats a long drive after a bad day.
62. Don’t miss out on opportunities to spend time with friends you value most, because too many of your waking hours are spent on a treadmill of constant doing to keep up with our culture’s demands. Good friends are stress relief! – Judy Dippel
63. In this hectic life, we have no time to take care of ourselves, hence massage is needed for rejuvenation and stress reduction. A lot of people are looking for quick fixes: like, they are taking medications, and they are doing other things which are not healthy. But massage is very holistic and natural. – Nargis Fakhri
64. A life spent in nature is a life well lived. – Michael Bassey Johnson
65. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Berthold Auerbach
66. Long distance running is meditation. When I finish a long run, it’s like my brain has been washed. All the stress and negative thoughts are left somewhere on those long kilometers. At the end, the illusions of the past and future are removed from my mind, and it is set back to zero, so I feel I am totally in the present moment, reset, and ready to restart my life afresh. – Robert Black
67. Don’t underestimate the power of humor and the ability to laugh at yourself to deliver peace and serenity. – Charles Glassman
Stress reliever quotes on meditation and mindfulness
68. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. – Walter Isaacson
69. Through meditation you can train your mind to be calm and stress-free in every situation. – Debasish Mridha
70. Our culture encourages us to plan every moment and fill our schedules with one activity and obligation after the next, with no time to just be. But the human body and mind require downtime to rejuvenate. I have found my greatest moments of joy and peace just sitting in silence, and then I take that joy and peace with me out into the world. – Holly Mosier
71. You need to empty your mind, and relax each other muscle group until you feel like you are going to melt into the floor. Then you just let it all go. All the expectations, all the unneeded worry, all the things other people want for you but you don’t want for yourself. – Kasie West
72. Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others. – Charlotte Eriksson
73. As you lean into your mindfulness journey, there is no such thing as getting better. There is going deeper, however, meaning establishing a deepening intimacy with your own intrinsic ability to pay attention on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment, even when life is challenging. – Jennifer Wolkin
74. Mindfulness works like a vaccine, boosting natural resilience. You undertake practices that can initially feel odd or counterintuitive. You practise in safe, low-risk ways, stimulating the recovery and growth mechanisms of the human mind and emotions. Meditating builds resilience muscles that are strong enough to kick in during stressful moments in life, when you need them the most. – Meg Salter
75. When you pay attention to sensory details in the present moment, your thoughts and mental chatter fade into the background. Your nervous system settles down. It makes room for positive feelings to bubble up within you.
Gina Simmons Schneider
76. To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life. – Jill Botte Taylor
77. Since embarking on this journey, I’ve learned that this is what alternative medicine does for people. By making us feel supported, by summoning the power of expectations and belief, by relaxing our bodies and reducing stress, mind-body therapies move molecules in our brains in a way that can reduce the ills we feel in our bodies. – Melanie Warner
78. Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter. – Amit Ray
Good quotes about stress management
79. Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy, and rewarding life. – Marilu Henner
80. There’s no point in reacting to a lack of calm in a way that makes you even less calm. – Claudia Gray
81. Stress is a natural and normal part of being alive. Stress-free promises set people up for failure. Even when used with good intentions and accompanied by relevant and beneficial ideas and practices, the use of the words stress-free is still ill-advised because the approach is infused with an erroneous idea that will never come to fruition. The stress-free idea has become a significant hurdle on the path to real stress management, which is the balance between using stress productively and relieving harmful stress symptoms. – Gudjon Bergmann
82. A positive attitude may not solve all our problems but that is the only option we have if we want to get out of problems. – Subodh Gupta
83. If the world leaders can afford a 7 hours sleep, most of us probably can too. – Pawan Mishra
84. There is no such thing as a stress-free life. No evidence has ever been presented which suggests that a stress-free life can ever be achieved. Stress can be managed, relieved and lessened, but never eliminated. – Gudjon Bergmann
85. If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. – Amit Ray
86. It’s okay if you don’t feel okay. If you feel angry, feel angry. If you feel sad, feel sad. Don’t make yourself wrong for what comes up from within you. If it’s there, it’s there. It won’t just disappear because you don’t want it anymore. It goes away when it’s allowed, when it’s felt, when it’s given permission to pass through. Welcome what you feel, and soon enough it will disappear. – Emily Maroutian
87. The amount of stress on the mind and body is known as allostatic load, of which we have different individual capacities for. – Shawn Wells
88. We are not born with stress, it is created through the way we think, the way we live and the choices we make day to day. When we understand how to use our breath, we can manage stress and improve our quality of life, feel less fear, feel more joy and find an internal sense of peace in a very short period of time. – Gregory Landsman
89. You don’t need to dig into unnecessary things and overwhelm yourself with information that doesn’t matter. It only makes you confused and worried. – Vishal Ostwal
Stress relief quotes for work
The biggest factor that causes stress in our lives is oftentimes our jobs. If you work in a stressful environment that makes your daily life difficult and quitting is not an option, these quotes are a good addition to my work-related stress relief affirmations. If, however, quitting is an option (maybe your boss is too harmful to your mental health and it’s not worth it), I also have affirmations to find a new job you’ll love!
90. You can do anything but not everything. – Kathy Freston
91. Smiling can be infectious in a workplace to help reduce stress, to help teamwork, to defuse high-pressure situations. The more you smile, the more people will smile back. – Byron Pulsifer
92. It is fine to be committed to work, but our minds need time to recover and our bodies need to move. – Annika Sorensen
93. Getting things done, and feeling good about it, means being willing to recognize, acknowledge, and appropriately manage all the things that have your consciousness engaged. Mastering the art of stress-free productivity requires it. – David Allen
94. Avoid hyper-scheduling yourself so you have free time to do something creative or perhaps to do nothing at all. – Melissa Steginus
95. Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will. – Dr. Robert Anthony
96. By simply breaking down the task into more manageable pieces much can be accomplished in a year. – Annika Sorensen
97. Do you spend more time stressing about work or doing it?
Frank Sonnenberg
98. The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. – William James
99. What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain. – Maya Angelou
100. Sometimes we just need to put down our phones, close our eyes and take a few deep breaths. Ideas are often in flight patterns around our brains, just waiting for clearance to land. – Sam Harrison
Final thoughts about releasing stress
Here you have them, 100 great quotes on dealing with stress in your life. I hope you loved them as much as I did when I picked them for this collection!
Share with me in the comments what insights you had and which quote is your favorite! And don’t forget to breathe and relax, especially when something stresses you out!
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