Truth time: We get stressed because we have an expectation of ourselves to be something or somewhere we’re not.
And while we may know that deep-down, preventing stress in the moment we feel that discomfort bubbling up can feel impossible.
When you feel overwhelmed, taking a few minutes to do a few simple actions could help you to slow down the onset, or stop the onset altogether + approach your next steps more efficiently.
Pausing to acknowledge the overwhelm + moving through some pre-planned questions can help you reduce your reactivity + prevent you from making ineffective choices in the chaos that stress creates.
Here are a few questions we ask ourselves when we feel stress bubbling up. We hope these questions will be helpful for you, too!
No. 1 — Have you taken a vitamin today?
If not, consider taking your usual daily vitamin right now!
If you don’t have any with you, buy some fresh or raw juice from a local store. These juices are usually in the refrigerated section.
The burst of natural vitamins can often help fill in the gaps that are missing in your current nutrition quickly + the more unprocessed your vitamin intake is, the more of those pure benefits get into your body for maximum efficiency. Our bodies can take longer + labor harder to process the manmade preservatives — time + energy that we don’t want to divert away from feeling better any longer than we have to be during a stress episode.
[Related: Our Daily Vitamins + Supplements]
No. 2 — Have you eaten real food in the past 3 hours?
If not, eat something with protein + not just simple carbs. Protein keeps our bodies feeling fuller for longer.
Peanut butter + banana or avocado toast is our go-to “stress-stopping snack”.
No. 3 — Are you hydrated?
Drink an entire bottle or glass of water.
Refill.
Repeat for at least 7 more times throughout the day!
Maintaining a healthy level of hydration is important to facilitate digestion, increase energy + even provide headache relief, so it could help your system cool down when you’re feeling pressure building up.
No. 4 — Have you made a list?
Set a timer for 1 minute + write all of the to-do’s on your mind.
Highlight the MOST important single action to do right now.
Set a timer for another minute + delete or delegate 3 of those items.
Just do it!
Asking yourself these 4 questions gives you the momentum to start physically crossing off items on your to-do list.
Making a list of what’s on your mind can help you let some air out of the balloon before you start. You might find that there isn’t actually that much to do or that your situation is less complicated than you initially estimated.
Alternatively, if you do have a lot to get done, having a list can allow you to see what’s a reasonable amount of work for you to do at a given time period.
It’s not reasonable to expect yourself to take on a complicated project with external dependencies + 20 moving pieces in one afternoon. Stress can make our responsibilities feel like everything needs to be done right now.
Having a to-do list can help us have a logical visual of what’s realistic + we can choose to be strategic + be kinder to ourselves instead of being our own frantic critic.
Keep These Questions Accessible
Keeping these questions available somewhere simple will save you from searching during your stressful moment (+ we know looking for something you can’t find only compounds stress, right?! Lost car keys, anyone?!)
So, consider bookmarking this blog post, writing these questions down (maybe on your favorite notebook, planner or stationery) or downloading the free graphic version we have available.
Just click here to initiate the download.
Our favorite accessibility trick: Create a fresh album on your phone to store these photos. You can use an asterisk (*) as the first character of your album name for the album to appear first alphabetically in your gallery. That way, your album is always a top-of-list available resource.
We’d love to hear from you now: what questions do you ask yourself to reset during a stressful time?
How would you recommend prioritizing the one-minute to-do list once you’ve made it?
Collaborate with other like-minded parent entrepreneurs in the comments below by sharing your stress-reducing tips.
And remember: after reading this post + asking yourself questions 1 through 4, take action + do one of the highlights you put down on your list.
Cheers to being a calm + collected parent CEO,
Kevin + Courtney