Simplify Your Life to Reduce Stress
By Valerie Mellema
Today's society is a lot different from what it was fifty years ago. Instead of working behind a plow outside, we're working behind computers inside. Instead of the kids helping to run the farm, they've got soccer on Tuesdays and Thursdays, gymnastics on Mondays and Wednesdays and cheerleading on Fridays, and then there are the games on the weekends. Plus, you've usually got something going on as well. All of this can be exciting and enrich our lives, but it can also lead to chronic stress, not to mention a chaotic lifestyle. If you're looking for a way to simplify your life to reduce your stress, you're not alone.
There are various ways you can begin simplifying your life to reduce the amount of stress you've managed to pack in, while still maintaining the activities that you and your children both enjoy.
The first step is to start with reducing clutter. Most stressed out people also have a cluttered house. Although you probably love much of what you have in your home, too much of a good thing causes stress as well. Clutter can make you feel uneasy and can drain your energy. To get rid of all this clutter can takes some time out of your day, so if you have a busy lifestyle then you may find that reducing clutter is hard to do. A simple way of doing this is to begin with 15 to 30 minutes each day taking the time to tackle one area of clutter at a time. As you piece meal through it, you'll find it disappear rather quickly and consistently. However, the kicker here is that you have to be diligent in maintaining a clutter free home after it's gone.
Negative relationships are also a stressor in life. The second step to reducing stress and simplifying your life is to also cut out any negative relationships you may have. Those who are super critical and unpredictable can be "toxic" to your simple lifestyle. They simply drain you of your energy, so it is a necessity to look at the relationships in your life and hold on to the ones that offer support and decide if the negative relationships in your life need to go.
The third step to creating a simpler and stress free life is to live within your means. We all know that money cannot buy long-term happiness, as the fact of the matter is that financial stress is the worst time of stress. Many people who make a lot of money tend to spend more and carry larger amounts of debt. This leads to the feeling of financial stress rather than a feeling of no stress and abundance. Those who don't have the money to spend more on anything other than the necessities of life can also find themselves in financial stress if they try to maintain a phisad that they can't afford.
Finally, try to automate your life as much as possible. When things run on autopilot, you have less to worry about. Getting any amount of automation into your life can help you, whether it is on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Making little changes such as setting up automatic bill pay options, setting up timers to water the lawn or plants and even hiring a house cleaner can help you to make more time in your life for the other areas of your life that you can't automate.
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