Activities I Enjoy While Coping with Difficult Situations

In the nonfiction book "The Other Wes Moore" on Page 44, the author Wes Moore talks about basketball becoming his getaway and escape from life in the Bronx. Over the course of his life, he continued to play throughout high school and was on the way to the NBA when his priorities changed. For Wes, the sport wasn't just his favorite activity to do, it was also his salvation. After waiting on the sidelines, he was called in to play. He played his best and despite not winning or succeeding against the older and bigger kids, Wes was opened to a new world. The point is there are a lot of fun activities that people enjoy doing while in any difficult situation and can help relieve stress. 

First, walking is one of my favorite activities to enjoy while dealing with difficult situations and it’s a good way to distract me from them. I walk home from my classes almost every day and at first, I didn’t want to do it but after doing it from Day 1, Day 2 and all days after, I felt comfortable doing it instead of waiting for a driving pickup and the thing is I don’t live too far from campus. Since then, walking helped me gain my confidence in doing 15-minutes to 20-minute walks. It gives me time to think and time to get away from the stressors and the workloads from my classes. Walking also helps me to take a break from my worries and sometimes I do worry about some things, and I love observing the environment around me and window shop-strolling past storefronts and in the mall. I also love having fun and silly walking companion friends who distracts me from the stress I’m currently dealing with. They always entertain me and make me laugh to my hardest until I cry. 

Next, art is also one of my favorite activities I enjoy so much. It’s my second favorite thing to do. I do a lot of pen and pencil artwork on my drawing journal and some digitally and I’ve been doing art for almost all my life, in classes, in most of the start of the pandemic and all in between. Art is my second passion behind being in the media business and I like to consider myself as a creative person when it comes to art. Drawing and creating cool artwork and making fan arts of my favorite shows, bands, baseball teams always makes me happy and it’s what I do sometimes when I’m down and while I’m in a difficult situation. 

Speaking of journals, writing journals is also a good manner of relief. Writing down the problem of the stress, my thoughts or emotions about it is useful for controlling the situations I’m in. For instance, I write journals every week for my Italian Film class this semester after watching a film, or clips from it in class. I’m normally anxious a lot and sometimes I write out my feelings and how my day was on it and there are some days where I have been off on writing on my journals and after getting back to it, it makes it more helpful and productive for me along with other tasks. After writing them down, what’s great about it is that people can look over it clearly and calculate what they need to do without effects of the emotion; the stress is relieve simply. In other words, writing journals is necessary and good for us to relieve stress and while to cope with difficult situations.

The last thing I like to do is to use positive language to create and think positive thoughts. There is an old saying “Change your thoughts, change your life.” and that is a little difficult for me because when I watch the news, there’s always some negativity in the news going on in the world and what helps is that there’s positive news too in this world and we need that more. This is what I do: Try to reduce the amount the negativity that’s going on around me and increase positivity and to be present in the moment and don’t focus on the past or stress about the future. Those are just some of the things I enjoy doing while coping with difficult situations.