Strategies to reduce your stress load.

After one week of logging your stress: Review your diary to see where you can effectively reduce stressors.   Some stressors like work commute will not be able to be eliminated but might  be able to be made less stressful by making some changes to your schedule or route.  Here are some things to consider when looking for strategies to reduce your stress load.  

• Talk to a therapist (therapists are not just for couples counseling and depression!  Many good counselors have great strategies to help with coping in various situations and can be a great resource to help you with your unique issues.)

• Limit your exposure to news to 1-2x a day, try to stick to hard new and reporting only limiting infotainment and opinion).  

• Confine your “worrying” to a penalty box.  (Create a dedicated time limit (3 min) for worrying, put yourself into the worrying penalty box and leave the worrying behind to get back into the game when the time is up.

• See about being able to work remotely 1x/week.  

• Ask for help.  Your support circle is larger than you think and if you are the kind of person who doesn’t normally ask for help, your tribe will be more than willing to help when you need it. 

• Sandbox your social media  If you find yourself going on social media anytime you find yourself bored and shockingly your social media time is more than 2-3 hours per day.  You might consider creating a single regular window of time each day when you have untethered sandbox social media play time.   This creates some constraints to your exposure to social media.  

• Outsource the most stressful of your responsibilities:  

  • Find a tutor to help your child with their school work, 

  • Create a chore chart for the family to help with the multitude of tasks around the house. 

  • See if a neighborhood kid will help with your landscaping.

• Create better boundaries.  

  • Limit the amount of time you spend on work outside of your work hours (no work messages or emails after 7 pm or on Sunday) 

  • Don’t start a television show past 10:00 on a weeknight. 

  • Set smart apps to shut down video game or internet access at a certain time 

• Automate as much of the routine in your life as possible

  • Breakfast / Lunch decisions (same breakfast everyday for one week switch on Sunday)

  • Weekly or Biweekly Dinner ideas (Taco Monday, Salad Sunday, etc) 

  • Morning routines / Evening routines (Do the same thing every morning and every evening to prepare yourself for the day / sleep)