Founders Series: 5 apps to help with stress

Welcome to our Founders Series, where we aim to give advice, answer questions and provide solutions for people starting their own businesses. If this sounds like you, read on! We've got plenty of content on a wide range of topics, all to help you grow and succeed as a founder.

In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at some of the apps you can use to help manage stress levels, anxieties and organise your thoughts. Running a business comes with numerous pressures, as well as the amount of things you have to do to get set up in the first place. It can be difficult to know where to start when looking for help, or even self help. There’s thousands of apps, websites and services you can use, but which ones do you choose?

We’ve highlighted just 5 of the apps we recommend for clearing your mind and making some space for more important things. We all get thoughts and stresses, it’s learning how to manage them in the right way that’s key.

It’s worth noting that although all of these apps are free to download, they do have paid features available after installation. However, there’s plenty of free elements to these that you can make the most of.

Clarity – CBT Thought Diary

Clarity is a CBT-based thought diary, used to help organise your thoughts and diserne the irrational from the rational. It helps you find a reason as to why you're having these thoughts, and aims to redirect that stress or anxiety into a more positive outcome. 

This kind of therapy is called CBT, or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. If you're not familiar, CBT helps people manage whatever mental health struggle they may be going through by challenging the thought patterns and behaviours.

Clarity has numerous features that utilise CBT, like a daily mood tracker to help monitor the changes in your emotions, a guided journal with targeted questions to direct your thought process and over 100 assessments and courses. These range from topics like ADHD and relationships, to depression and sleep. There’s so many categories to choose from, so no matter what situation you’re in, there’s a course for you.

The app also includes meditation audios to follow and breathing exercises, if you’re looking to try the more physical approach to managing stress and anxiety.

The Mindfulness App

If meditation is something you’ve found helps you, or is something you’d like to try, this app is a great option. The Mindfulness App takes you through various guided meditations to help reduce stress and give you a better night's sleep. 

When you first download the app, you’re taken through a few questions so your experience can be tailored based on things like your age, how much you’ve meditated previously and what your goal is through having this app. It’ll then build a personal plan for you from your answers, 

89% of users have said that this app has helped reduce their stress and anxiety levels and another 75% have said it’s helped them gain focus. There are paid features available, but there’s plenty you can do without signing up for a premium plan. Every day you’ll be given a 4-minute guided meditation, focusing on different areas like breathing, sound, the mind and appreciation. You can also take courses on meditation and explore the large catalogue of sleep sounds, like campfire sounds, the sea and even a train ride.

Spotify

Speaking of sleep sounds – Spotify in general is a great place to find all the music and podcasts your heart desires. But something you may not have discovered is the large back catalogue of sleep music, sounds, white noise, stories and podcasts.

Below we’ve listed a few of our favourites for you to check out:

• Dreamful Bedtime Stories – a collection of both classic and modern short stories, read by a soothing voice, with instrumental background sounds
• Sleepy – audiobooks read by Otis Gray, who has the perfect baritone voice to send you straight to sleep
• Feed Your Soul – made up of different sound frequencies to soothe stress and anxiety, this has everything a stressed out founder might need. Feed Your Soul also has frequencies for manifestation and removing negativity, among others.
• Lofi meditation – if you’ve downloaded The Mindfulness App and you’re looking for a soundtrack to your meditation, Spotify has curated a playlist of lofi meditation beats to help you focus.

If you can’t find anything you like on Spotify, YouTube is also a great place to look. There’s anything from the sound of rain in a forest, to a crackling fire in the Gryffindor common room. Whatever floats your boat! 

Self-help App for the Mind (SAM)

This non-profit wellbeing app uses self-help techniques to help you manage and monitor your mental health. Self-help App for the Mind, or SAM, was created by a team at the University of the West of England, who worked with psychologists to build an app based on clinical best practices for dealing with mental health and wellbeing. 

Within the app, you can track your mood, make note of anxiety triggers, connect with others on a message board and participate in different mood boosting activities. Like some of the other apps on this list, the activities consist of breathing exercises, shifting focus and many others. There’s also links to other areas you can find help, like counselling services. This app is the all-rounder for anxiety and mental health self-help solutions and guides.

What’s up? A Mental Health App

Rounding off our list of apps, is What’s up? A Mental Health App. As soon as you open the app, you’re greeted with some stats about mental health, reminding you that you’re not alone in what you’re feeling. In fact, between 400 and 500 million people suffer from depression alone and it affects people of all ages.

The app is free, with only a few themes only available through paying, but aside from that all the content is accessible without payment. It comes with a wide range of self-help features, like a diary, positive and negative habit tracking, coping strategies and information documents about anger, anxiety, stress and more.

Everything in the app is easy to find, making it possibly the best app on this list in terms of user experience.

Find help when you need it

Of course these apps are just the beginning. There’s loads of free resources available to help with whatever struggle or stress you might be dealing with. And if you’re looking for like-minded people who are also just starting out as a founder, why not try forums? They’re a great place to share ideas, make connections and network with others in your situation.

Our Founders Series has loads of other useful blogs and guides on a wide range of topics to help founders. Plus, if you’ve got any questions about a specific product or service we provide, like setting up a business email, domain, or building your first website, our team of experts are on hand 24/7 to help. Give us a call on 0800 0612 153 or message via live chat. We also have a support page full of useful articles on our products and services.