Just want you to know that I am so grateful for you and I appreciate all you do!!!
There is a question that has been handed to me over and over via email and that is, "Elizabeth, what do YOU do to destress yourself?"
Well, I try my hardest to practice everything I preach, and every morning I do specific things for my stress prevention.
Every morning I wake up, the first thing I do, when I get out of bed, is get on my knees and pray. I pray with gratitude, I pray for forgiveness, and I pray for blessings upon those who are in need. The gratitude helps me remember all the wonderful things I am blessed with, the forgiveness helps me remember the weaknesses that I need to improve on, and the blessings for others are something that is very important to me.
After my morning prayer, I do four things to help destress and prevent stress in my life and they are clean, exercise (yoga), meditate, and read my scriptures.
These are my morning habits, every morning, and they help me prevent stress by starting the day right and feeling good.
The cleaning helps me keep my house decent. My house is not immaculate but, I am not embarrassed to invite guests in when they pop by. When I have a dirty house, I do not feel good about myself.
Our lives are busy and sometimes a clean house is not a priority, I understand that. But for me, what joy it brings to have a decent home because my home is my Heaven on earth.
After I clean, I do yoga, which has been a part of my life for about nine to ten years. Although I use to attend classes, I now know enough to do a routine of poses that stretch nearly every part of my body. This practice helps me feel 25 years young. People my age (which is 45 btw), or younger, are always complaining about their aches and pains and yoga is a great cure.
After my yoga, I meditate. Meditation is absolutely the most important thing we can do for our minds. When we practice meditation, we quiet our racing thoughts and find joy in the moment, no matter how stressed we are.
Just about every person, who comes to me about their stress, or other related problems, I encourage them to meditate. Unfortunately, this is the hardest thing to get people to do.
Finally, the last thing I do is read my scriptures. This is a spiritual practice that keeps me and my faith alive. All of the other things I do before I read my scriptures, I do for at least 15 minutes but, I read my scriptures, usually, for 20 to 30 minutes a day. I want to be close to Heavenly Father and I love having the spirit with me as much as possible.
Now, I understand some of you may say, all of this sounds a bit silly and why would I want to start my day with so many things? I ask you, what is the alternative? Getting up, getting ready, and going to work, school, or where ever you have to go?
Doing all of these things helps me create and start my day with focus and intention. Yes, I love to live my life with intention. I intend on having a healthy and clean home, body, mind, and spirit.
Just getting up and going lets us run our lives on auto-pilot and remain in the constant state of going nowhere.
The goal is to find things that will help us feel good. When we create habits that help us feel good about ourselves and life, we are much better at handling stress that comes our way. Healthy habits replace stressful ones and when we have habits they become a part of our blueprint for our life.
There you have it! The things I do, every day, that destress me. Every day, I take care of the most important things to me, my home, my body, my mind, and my spirit. All of these things keep me emotionally stable and it helps me help others.
Have a wonderful week!
Until the next post, don't forget to have fun and be playful.
