Sometimes life can get tricky and all you need is a little advice and for someone to give you a quick pep talk and some easy fixes to your problems. Well that motivator and advice giver is me. I love helping people and I love lists so I figured why not combine the two. Follow me as we undertake every tricky situation imaginable and try to fix it in simple steps that almost anyone is capable of. First stop on our journey together, the pressure of school.

With a new school year come great things like new friends and new opportunities but also new stresses. The pressure of the new year can feel almost overwhelming at times and I know I’ve lost hours upon hours of relaxation and sleep to school work and extracurriculars and we’re only five weeks into school. So when life can’t get any more chaotic and you feel as though you can’t catch your breath, here are some simple tips on how to beat the stress and come out on top.

1. Use your agenda, maybe even use two. I cannot stress enough (ha, get it? Stress? OK moving on) how useful this is. I use two agendas, one for homework and one for extracurriculars/social plans. There is nothing more helpful than having everything you need to get done scheduled and recorded in one place.

2. Make lists. Whether it’s what you need to bring with you to school or what you need to get done before a certain deadline, lists are great for organizing and it’s oddly satisfying to check things off.

3. Prepare the night before. If you pack a lunch, pack what you can the night before. If you play a sport, pack everything you need the night before. Make sure you have all of your homework completed, organized and placed in your backpack. In the morning this eliminates stress because you’re not running around trying to find everything.

4. If you’re supposed to be in two places at once, just communicate with your coaches, sponsors or teachers. If you’re struggling in a class and need to meet with a teacher after school instead of heading to a sports practice or club meeting, communicate with your sponsor or coach by either visiting their room to tell them or emailing them. Remember, grades always come before extracurriculars. Your coach or sponsor will understand this and appreciate you being proactive and communicating with them.

5. Make a system. Find a daily routine you can do that allows you to get everything you need done. But don’t forget to allot yourself time to do things that you enjoy and that relax you. If you overload yourself with stress and don’t take any time for yourself, it can feel as though the walls are closing in on you and you can become very agitated. So, remember to plan some you-time into your schedule.

6. Last but not least, don’t forget to glance at the bigger picture every once in a while. If you’re anything like me, you can get super focused on one bad grade or one bad game and it can ruin your mood. When you find yourself upset over one thing that went wrong, take a step back and assess the situation. Look at the effect it will have on you in a month or even a year. Probably not very much of an effect, right? So just remember that not everything is the end of the world and you can handle whatever you set your mind to, even when it feels impossible.