Relaxing activities and how to find them

Yes, the title is another Potterverse reference. Mind you, I still haven't seen Crimes of Grindelwald. (To be honest, I decided to skip it since the first Magic in America didn't impress; I blame Rowling for ever giving a shot at screenwriting.) But no, the title isn't a clickbait, I just like making references to poor movies.

I'll make a bold assumption that most people experience this thing, emotion, called stress from time to time. I'd even go as far as to say stress is good - it pushes you forward and makes you exercise out-of-the-box thinking as well as perform well under pressure. In a word, stress is good.

But how about too much stress? And how about stress that doesn't push you forward, only squeezes you down, trying to destroy you? Well, that kind of stress has its benefits as well - the opportunity to fight and get rid of it and thus increase your abilities is invariably present - but it can get a bit too much, especially if you don't have complete control over it. That's when you need relaxing activities. Those, naturally, are different depending on the individual, so I can't just tell you specifically what you should do. You must try different activities out to see which give you that relaxing sensation. It could be throwing stones in water and cracking creme brulee tops with a spoon, like Amélie. It could be watching TV, although too much TV could be considered pure escapism; but for relazing purposes, it's totally fine.

(Then again, isn't the desire to relax a form of escapism...?)

For example, for yours truly, the following activities are great for relaxing:

Painting a plank piece of wood with acrylic colors, even if I don't end up using the final product in any way.
Running. (Haven't been able to do it for a couple of weeks, though - dangerously icy ground - and I can see the effect in my stress levels.)
Shooting videos for WIP.
A single shot of whiskey, enjoyed slowly while watching an ambiance video.
A walk outside in fresh air.

If you don't know yet what works for you, try different things and see how it makes you feel. You can try with a walk in the woods (little active stimulus) and a walk in a city centre (plenty of stimulus), analyze which extreme had a more relaxing effect, and adjust from there. You may even want to include both in your personal relaxation list: sometimes different situations call for different methods.