With NaNoWriMo upon us, it’s important that we take time out of our daily lives to relax and not just stress about making those daily deadlines. We’ve collected five methods to help you relax this month, so that you’re not completely bald by the time November is over!

RainyMood

RainyMood is one of the best websites you can go to if you’re in the need of stress relief. Unless you hate the sound of rain, which would really surprise us, this is our go-to tool for feeling relaxed.

The idea of it is simple; one website with one mode: rain. There are no gimmicks, no creepy music or other sound effects. Just the sound of raindrops on a window, which will relax you even at your most stressed time of the day. Although we do realize that winter is here, so you might not need this artificial source!
 

Relaxing Nature

Relaxing Nature is exactly what you’d expect it to be: A plethora of natural sounds ranging from the ocean to forest wildlife.

We’ve found that combining this with RainyMood is exceptionally relaxing, and you’ll be sure to find yourself either falling asleep or entering zen mode in no time.

Heck, you can probably combine all of these sources together as one majorly relaxing party of awesome. Although you might just have a buzz of sounds at that point!

Virtual Fireplaces

This isn’t an entirely new idea, but we’ve found that YouTube is filled with fireplace videos just for the sake of relaxing! Whether you live in Arizona or Greenland, it’s always calming to have the sound of a fireplace in the background.

You can search YouTube, where we found this three-hour video, or you can just go to ClassyFirePlace, which combines the fireplace with rain and classy jazz music.

Although if you’re like us, you might not want the jazz music, which is why we opted for the three-hour video posted below. Combine that video with RainyMood and you’ve got yourself your own winter oasis!

Calm

Calm is another resource for the sounds of wildlife, and we’ve found it to be particularly useful if you just want the sound of a stream or waterfall without the bother of crickets or birds in the background. You can also time it if you so wish, which means you don’t have to worry about turning it off in the morning!

Users beware, there’s a creepy voice that we’re sure is intended to calm you, but you can turn him off as soon as you get on. Don’t know about you, but when we write we’d rather not have ominous “relaxing” voices coming out of our speakers.
 

iTunes 1920s Radio Network

If you go to your iTunes and click Radio, under Eclectic you’ll find the 1920’s Radio Network, which is always playing the most calming and relaxing music we’ve ever listened to.

One for the history nerds as well, this plays true music that was created between the 1920s & 1950s.

Take some time to put on that fireplace, get the rain going, and listen to some old classics while you read or write your NaNoWriMo novel.

How do you relax?