Live Healthy Live Well

RELAX!!! Today is National Stress Awareness Day. This is your opportunity to recognize that there is plenty of stress in your life… as if you didn’t already know. More importantly, today is an opportunity to learn, and to do something about the stress…… before it drives you batty or worse.

The sights and sounds of stress are all around us: a newborn baby crying; a coach psyching up the softball team; and a college student biting their nails before a midterm.

Stress can be good or bad.  It can work against you or for you.  Psychologists point out, stress is normal.  And it’s not always unhealthy – if you learn to handle it.  To get stress under control, one must learn to “Simplify”.

S – Slow Down

I – Imagine Doing Less

M – Make Time for Loved Ones

P – Practice Patience

L – Learn to Gently Say No

I – Increase Your Quiet Time

F – Follow Your Heart

Y – Yield to Life – Yield to Peace – Yield to Joy

For most of us, work is an inescapable fact of life – it is the way we obtain the physical necessities of existence.  However, everyone needs to renew, recharge and relax.  But making an effort to enjoy life’s little moments simply means taking the time to stop and smell the roses.  The secret is in slowing down long enough to savor the sunrise, stroll in the park, sip your coffee – to enjoy the things that are the essence of life.

Let go! Take a chance.  Simplify.

Writer:  Cindy Shuster, CFLE, Extension Educator, Family & Consumer Sciences, OSU         Extension, Perry County or http://perry.osu.edu

Sources/References:

Ebron, A. (1996). Why Goofing Off is Good for You. Family Circle, February 1, 28 -31.

Hansel T. (1983). When I Relax I Feel Guilty.  Elgin, Ill.: David C. Cook Publishing.

Hill, E.J., Ferris, M., & Weitzman, M. (2001).  Finding an Extra Day a Week: A Positive            Influence of Perceived Job Flexibility in Work and Family Life Balance. Family            Relations, 50, 49 – 58.

Jenkins, M. P., Repetti, R.L., & Crouter, A.C. (2000).  Work and Family in the 1990s. Journal of       Marriage and Family, 62, 981 – 995.

McGee-Cooper, A., Trammell, D. & Lau, B. (1992).  You Don’t Have to Go Home From Work   Exhausted!  Bantam Books.