Feeling Stressed? These 5 Expert-Approved Mental Exercises Can Help

We all have moments when stress strikes, and when it does, it's important to have a handful of tools at your disposal to help. So, we rounded up five simple mental exercises that are sure to help redirect your focus to more calming thoughts:

"By purposefully re-engaging our rationality, we can shift out of worry and into logic," Leeds explains. One way to do this is by thinking of things that start with A, B, C, and so on, until you've completed the whole alphabet. You can repeat this as many times as necessary, using different categories such as food, first names, or countries, she adds.

By simply counting down from 100 by sevens, we're able to access that part of our brain, and subsequently, feel calmer.

As you do your breathwork, you can take it a step further by pairing it with positive affirmations to further bolster a positive state of mind. (Check out our list of 50+ affirmations to help you get started!)

We know, sitting for meditation may not be everyone's cup of tea—but meditation can look like a lot of different things (and it certainly counts as a mental exercise). Not only has meditation been proved to ease stress and increase overall feelings of well-being, but it can include anything from mindfully sipping a warm beverage to doing a walking meditation or drawing a mandala. It all comes down to how you like to tap into the present moment.

You can also take this a (literal) step further by incorporating movement. Take a walk around your neighborhood following a specific color. Perhaps you see a blue car up ahead, and then when you get there, you notice a blue sign up ahead. Keep walking toward the next blue thing until your head feels a bit more clear.

Stress is bound to happen, but when we know how to control it, it doesn't have to control us. Redirecting our focus and engaging different parts of our brains can work wonders in helping us move into a calmer state of mind.