Stress Week: How Do You Relieve Stress?

Yesterday we talked about what is stressing us out right now. How did it feel to identify your stresses? Do you have both good stresses and bad stresses going on in your life? Are there things on your list that you cannot control? Of course there are. Much of what stresses us out is BECAUSE it is out of our control and we don’t like that feeling. I’ve never met anyone, especially a woman, who has said, “Being out of control makes me feel great!” But I have heard people say, “Once I realized that I cannot control it and I let go of it, I felt ________ (lighter, freer, relieved).”

Our goal is not to be stress-free, right? That is never going to happen, and let’s face it, when I think of someone with no stress it seems they might also be irresponsible…for responsibilities bring on stress.

The goal is to deal with our stress in a way where we can continue to be mentally healthy, physically healthy and emotionally healthy. 

What are things that help relieve your stress? (here are mine)

Socializing (hence the reason I started this blog)

Sleep

Whining/Self Pity

Running

Read or Watch TV/Procrastinate

Hot Bath

Reasearch (search the web, find a book about it)

Pray/Scripture Study/Meditate

Massage

A little lovin' in the bedroom;)

Shopping

Now look at your list and dicide them into two categories: 

helps us reach our goal or does not help us reach our goal. 

Keep in mind, you may have some of the same strategies on your list as I do mine. However, we may have them in different categories if our goals are different. My goal is to be mentally, physically and emotionally healthy.

I really would LOVE it if you would share with me how you deal with stress. Maybe you have a strategy that I (or someone else) can use!

Tomorrow we will talk about how exercise and our food choices directly affect our stress.