Fight the stress with quality and beauty.
Many Italians are stressed. The time of “Dolce vita and fun” are almost gone with the economic crisis and covid. But in Italy, we have many resources from our culture, many Italians are enjoying life despite these tough times. I can tell you how I am able, sometime, to manage the stressful situation with simple actions and some little investment in the quality of life.
1) Fight stress with the pizza “fatta in casa” ritual.
I have started cooking homemade pizza; I discovered this is one of the best therapies for stress and that it is fantastic for your mood too, but you need to understand the philosophy and know its secrets.
To make a pizza homemade you need to work physically with your hands to mix yeast with water and flour.
Kneading is not only manual work. If you do it right, it is also a very relaxing and ancient activity. The modern substitute for kneading relaxation is the stress ball, but the results are not the same. Then you need to patiently wait for the rise of the dough and finally, you need to work manually to shape it like a pizza.
One of the major pleasures of a homemade pizza starts when you cook the pizza. In a few minutes, with an elevated temperature oven, the wonderful fragrance of the pizza will fill your house. This can turn your day on a positive path!
Finally, if you use whole-wheat flour, high-quality extra virgin olive oil, natural yeast, and tomato, then you will eat one of the healthiest and best Italian food. Eating your pizza will be the best part of it! Obviously, it takes some time to learn how to do it right.
2) New high-quality music to fight stress.
Music is an easier but less affordable method to fight stress, especially if you do it in the “Italian way”. Italy was the capital of music, in Italy was invented how to write music and was invented most of the classic musical instruments. Food and music were always the basis of our life in Italy; both must be at an extremely elevated level for many Italians.
Many people forgot the benefit of music. Probably is the best to play music, but even if you don’t know how to play music, like me, you can have a huge benefit from music. I suggest this:
- To get the best benefit from the music you need to give a “new high-quality sound” to your stressed brain. For me, a new song that I like, played on a good HIFI music system, is a “new high-quality sound” that heals my stress. Sometimes it is even better with some old songs that we loved a lot and we had almost forgotten.
- Listen to music without doing stressful activities. If I do a stressful activity with music, I get more stressed. For example, if I need to work fast, the most wonderful music could become a disturbing noise.
- Sing and dance if you can. If I can sing and dance, it is the best relaxing activity for me.
I invested some money in a very good home cinema with two big loudspeakers. A cheaper solution is to buy good headphones. Unfortunately, headphones, after some time, become stressful. Quality is the key, but quality without passion and sentiment doesn’t work. You need to feel the music.
3) Fight stress with sport and beauty.
Italy is a country of beauty, nature, buildings, dresses, food, etc. are wonderful in Italy. If you do sport in the beauty of nature or wonderful Italian cities, your stress will disappear, and your happiness will start to rise! We are usually lucky with the weather.
If I can, I only do sport outdoors, in beautiful contests. My bike is beautiful and is part of the pleasure to live the beauty and the sport together.
The concept of beauty is very personal. For example, I find out that the actor Robin Williams was in love with custom-made steel bicycles, colorfully painted by hand. He was in love with classic race bikes, especially the one from the Italian master builder Dario Pegoretti. Even a weld joint on steel can be a piece of art. I prefer modern innovations, like carbon fiber frames, as they are flexible where it is needed and exceptionally light. Unfortunately, Carbon fibers are not resilient like steel and aluminum but my goal is to enjoy bicycle rides as much as possible.
Hence, spend some time to find your concept of beauty and a contest that is beautiful for you; spend some time and money to find the right high-quality sport instruments. In this way, doing sport will be a joy. In my experience, not only your stress will go away but also you could feel happy!
The weather variable.
In winter, the ancient Romans used to go into the thermal baths, ironically in Italy now it is too expensive and difficult to fight stress like them, but in Germany, it is more affordable and common.
The research of the beauty and quality to find a balance is not only in the Italian culture, and there are many ways to get it. As I told you, I prefer to cook, listen to music and make a lot of sports than to grow a bonsai, even if I like also gardening :-)
