Do you ever feel like you wear too many hats? How many balls are you frantically
juggling as you face another week of way too many responsibilities? Life is
just like that. We all smile when we remember our younger selves, longing for
the carefree days of adulthood, thinking that without school and homework our
lives would be idyllic. It’s all just part and parcel of being an adult, isn’t
it? Maybe not.
Ha! The Mayo Clinic offers these warnings about letting things ride. They list headache,
muscle tension, chest pain, fatigue, stomach upset and sleep problems as
symptoms of stress associated with keeping too much on your plate. Healthline
offered some even more basic symptoms for noticing mental strain, things like
acne and changes in appetite. There is no question that stress affects your
overall health and wellbeing, so why do we tend to just live with it? Why do we
not notice and eradicate this silent killer?
Part
of the reason is the misconception that stress won’t kill you. Don’t
believe it for a second. While it is true that stress is not a heart attack,
its secretion of stress hormones and resultant affects will eventually kill
you, and thus it masks its danger. Another big factor is the myth that
stress is synonymous with life. Nothing could be further from the truth. As
a matter of fact, stress management is a life skill we need to learn and apply
as we shoulder these ever-increasing responsibilities. Some of those personal
interventions are easy to incorporate into your daily life.
Structure Your Time. Part of stress management is
learning how to limit scope creep…that invasive, ever increasing thief of your
time. When you lay out a timeline for a project or an overlay of your planner
to allocate your blocks of availability, you begin to corral an out-of-control
lifestyle. That structure allows you to track how long a project should take
compared to the reality of how much time a project requires. It lets you off
the hook if you need to schedule a later block to finish a responsibility
without letting a task take over your day. Remember, it’s your time to use
wisely and effectively. The Morning Business Chat also suggested learning to be mindful of when you’ve reached
your limit of just how much you can handle. Learn to say, “No,” to some
friends’ requests.
Priortize. The Harvard Business Review suggested learning how to prioritize life’s demands. Work. Family.
Community. Friends. Divide the pie any way you like, but there’s still only so
much you. Learn how to live by each wedge’s limits for a saner summer.
Employ the common remedies for stress. Exercise. Get
enough shut eye. Eat your greens. You already know the basics of a healthy
lifestyle, but you need to remind yourself: There’s a reason why your old mama
drilled these healthy maxims into your head. They work. You don’t just trash
them with adulthood, rather, embrace them.
Learning to balance the demands of life is part and parcel
of summer living. The beach beckons. A family vacation is on the calendar. A
friend invites you to a game of sand volleyball. Don’t let all these important
distractions take you away from the more important source of your bread and
butter. Instead, learn to balance the many demands of adulthood.
