Sometime stress just rears its ugly head....

Too much stress is not a good thing. I don't care who you are if you have too much stress in your life, you need to do something about it. I have worked at managing stress in my life over the last few years and I am definitely in a better place about it. I still need to find more ways to manage it even better because sometimes it does become a focal in my daily life.

For me, there are several outlets for stress that I need to remember:

1. Swimming -- There is something about gliding through the water that allows my brain to break free and relax.

2. Bubble bath -- Is there anything that a nice bubble bath cannot dissolve away?

3. Sweating -- When I am particularly stressed, I love to just go and sweat at the gym. Because I have changed my workouts, I haven't really had any of those two hour sessions when I would just go from cardio machine to cardio machine of late. Maybe I need to fit one in just to release the stress.

4. Sleeping -- Sometimes it is true that things will be better tomorrow, so going to bed and sleeping helps a lot.

5. Walking away -- It may not seem right but sometimes I just need to walk away from issues and think about things. I am a bit of an introvert and need to mull things over quite a bit.

The list of things I no longer want to use as stress relief:

1. Eating -- So, there the cycle begins. I get stressed. I eat. I get more stressed because I ate. Not a good thing.

2. Yelling/screaming -- Sometimes I am guilty of this, especially when I feel like I am not being heard in a particular stressful situation. I am working on it.

3. Holding it in -- Ok. I do not want to bottle up the stress. It needs a release but the appropriate release.

For the most part, my life is good but there are times that stress level gets higher than I would like. My goal is to use the first list for managing it more often than I use the second list and, if I do say so myself, I am doing better than I did in the past.

One thing that I finding is not working is my food page. I just do not have time to update it everyday. So, I am not going to stress about it. So, it may be removed soon.

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. ~Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne