Address stress recipe for success
Your address stress list:
5 minutes snuggling with a pet
1 minute of deep breathing
5 min break from work for fresh air and sunlight
After dinner walk with loved one
Meditation practice or quite contemplation
1 minute hug
15 minutes in nature (no devices)
Mix of gentle and intense exercise
1x week unplug from social media, news, tv
Counseling session
Weekly massage (even if it comes from your spouse)
Time spent engaging in conversation with friend
Step 1: Start addressing stress in small ways
Start with 5-10 minutes each day of one of the above listed activities. Yyou can slowly increase the time or add additional activities but don’t add stress to your life by over committing yourself. Start small and SLOWLY work up from there.
Step 2: Do Less:
What are you doing in your life that is unnecessary, can be delegated, automated, or reduced?
What are you doing daily that isn’t serving you or benefiting you? Most people can’t believe that I don’t watch TV anymore but I found that to be one of the biggest time-sucks in my life that I could eliminate and use that excess time to do things that make my life more efficient.
Are there things that you are doing that you can delegate or automate (even if it means that you have to let go of a bit of control) ?
Can you find other ways to do less? Is it absolutely necessary to spend an extra 15 minutes making something perfect when good enough will do?
Step 3: Be ok with saying no
So many times in our lives we think that we need to contribute our time or efforts to everything that comes our way. Asked to be on the PTO, asked to be the team mom, asked to take the lead on a project at work, asked to help out with a neighborhood barbeque, asked by a friend to bake a cake for her son’s birthday…. By saying yes we are taking away from our own time to address our own health AND are contributing to our stress at the same time.
Next time you hear that little voice in your head saying I should do this… take a second and evaluate if you really WANT to do this and then make an active decision to either participate or just let that should go with a polite decline.
Decide which things in your life are your priorities, then when asked you can simply make a decision based on whether that request is aligned with your priorities or not.
