8.26.2014

WHEN LIFE GETS CRAZY: 4 TIPS

I am not the kind of person who glorifies being busy. I always strive for balance. I enjoy working on things that I love, and then relaxing with the ones that I love: "work hard, play hard", if you will.

So, when I tell you that the past month has been crazy busy, you know that I am not saying that as a humblebrag.

On top of doing a partnership with zulily, taking a weeklong trip to visit family, working on reorganizing my shop with a new company, and having my website redesigned, Wes and I moved to a new place.

That's a lot of stuff for one little month!

Yes, we did move out of our house after having it for less than a year. And yes, we are crazy people (more on that later).

Now that we are all moved into our new place and my workload is calming down a little bit, I thought I would reflect on this crazy month, and let you know what I learned about keeping your head above water when you're totally stressed.

1. Work in "chunks"
When my to-do list is running off of the page, emails are awaiting responses, the dog is barking, and I have errands to run, I have this "fight or flight" response that makes me just want to throw in the towel and lie down! I get paralyzed by being overwhelmed with stress, so it really helps me to break my workload into chunks of time. I will set the timer on my phone for an hour and work non-stop at something for that amount of time, and then I'll take a ten minute break. This helps keep me from going from one thing to the next, checking Facebook, wasting time, etc.

2. Cut back where you can
I hated to do it, but for about a week and a half, I shut down my main shop as well as my Etsy shop. I just couldn't keep up with orders on top of everything else that I had going on. Sometimes, you just have to cut something out and come back to it later. I don't regret it one bit, and I would recommend doing the same if you can!

3. Prioritize
This is obvious, but you have identify the crucial tasks on your list, and tackle the most important things first. When we were selling the house, there were things that had to be done to prepare, and everything else had to be put on hold.

4. Identify what you're in control of
I am an anxious person anyway, so when I'm stressed, it just goes to another level. When my eyes started twitching from the anxiety, I realized I needed to take a stress inventory. It really helps me a lot to look my fears right in the eye, make a mental list about them, and identify which of them are in my control. Sometimes I  worry about things that are completely out of my control, which is such a waste of time! Identifying these fruitless worries helps me to make my peace with them, and then that's one less stressor on the list.

I hope that was helpful for any of you who are stressed out at the moment - I have learned a lot from this crazy month! Oh and if that doesn't work for you, I recommend wine. ;)

Let me know how you deal with stress and being busy in the comments below! xo

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