This past summer, my professional life took way off in a beautiful blessed direction. Real life confession- that is why you have received way more reflections and comics. Thank you for your likes, comments, and re-blogs. Thank you for knowing sometime the best life messages are short or come through humor. Though, as usual, I digress. Back to the title of this post “Thoughtful Ways to Stress Less”. I came across Lisa Quast’s tips, and although these past months have not been stressful per se, I still wanted to go over this list and see where I could improve (or better yet, to see where I was exceling).

• Carve out email time -I have nailed this at work- the first thirty minutes and last thirty minutes of my day is spent on email. The issue is the personal emails that suck my time. I have a friend that keeps her email on autoreply and it reads “Thank you so much for contacting me. Please note that I check emails once per day Monday – Friday. Due to the volume of emails that I receive daily, I may take up to 48 hours to respond to your email, longer if you contact me during the weekends. I will do my best to respond to your email as soon as I am able. Thank you so much for your patience and graciousness.” Oh, how I need to get to that point.
• Switch from multitasking to single-tasking-  I am excelling at this if I am prepping a lecture or reviewing a client case before a session. Now on the social media front, not so much. Yes, I can line up reflections and comics, but I am not the best at finding titles (I swear AJ is the queen of this) or Instagram captions for photos (you may have noticed some of my bloopers over time).
• Prep your attire – I am never going to be the woman who lays her wardrobe out at night. I dress by the way I am feeling when I wake up. Luckily, my closet is well organized.
• Plan your meals – I respect people who meal prep. I am just not that individual. My biggest de-stressor is co-cooking with my spouse after a long day. I am more of a snack prepper, as I am not a fan of wasting money on convenience food.

This list is interesting to me, I am surprised Quest didn’t put exercise on the list. I personally find my runs to be one of my biggest stress busters. I also believe in saying no to opportunities, if it’s that good you will feel it in your being. What do you do to destress?