Stress Management Thoughts

As part of this week’s Unstoppable assignments, I had to take a stress test. I’m not at all surprised by my results:

You have scored between 5 and 25
You’ve got it under control!

Your score indicates an average level of stress. This means that your lifestyle allows you to deal with stress in a controlled, non-aggressive way. Even so, you may still get overwhelmed at times.

Having experienced a variety of stressful situations throughout my life, I’ve learned how to manage the various curve balls that get thrown my way. There are two phrases that also come to mind that have made it easier for me:

• Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life (Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff Series)
• Nobody cares. - My mom told me this a lot, and she meant it in a positive way, even though it doesn’t seem like that. I’m an overanalyzer, and there are times where I look at too minute of details. Her “nobody cares” is her way of reminding me that nobody cares as much as I do about certain things and that I shouldn’t get worked up about them.

I also am in tune with myself to understand that there are a variety of “voices” for me to listen to and trust - the voices of my mind, body, and soul. Knowing myself makes it easy for me to figure out how to address the stressors or at least how to calm down, step away, and break down overwhelming stressors into smaller, tolerable chunks.

Sources of Stress

My main stressors at the moment are:

• My health - with the weather fluctuating and me being a human barometer, I’ve been fighting a lot of sinus infections and threats of respiratory infections. My lungs are taking a beating. It’s a bit nerve-wracking.
• Moving - there are a couple of facets in my life moving around, and we are talking of moving within the next year or so, in hopes of being in a great school district for our boys and closer to my husband’s work to have a shorter commute for him. Thinking of packing up everything, selling our house, and finding a new house are all overwhelming.

Managing the Stress

As these things feel overwhelming, I’ve found some of the following methods to be helpful in keeping the stress down or at least manageable:

• In terms of my health, I have breathing exercises that I can do for my lungs. In addition to normal breathing exercises, I have a music playlist with songs that challenge my ranges and can help me assess whether I’m at the right spot of recovery or I need more work and need to pace myself carefully.
• In terms of moving, I watch House Hunters and take great joy in watching others and how they have to make their decisions. I’m definitely breaking things up into smaller chunks, and I’m super thankful for having the world’s greatest mother-in-law for our realtor. She helped us buy our current house over a decade ago, and she’s awesome at showing us properties that she knows will be a great fit for us. We also have a great mortgage guy who got us pre-qualified and has been working with us for over a decade as well. He takes the scariness away from understanding mortgages and loans and puts it in plain English.

I can only take things one day at a time, moment by moment. Knowing that, I take a deep breath and live life, not letting the stress take me down.