So I was talking to one of my friends today and she mentioned that she was getting her clothes ready for the week. I inquired as to what that was about and she shared with me that for most of her life she always made selections of what she would wear to work that morning. The eventual result of that activity led to a stress filled morning where she couldn’t decide on exactly what to wear, often couldn’t find the shoes she wanted and then noticed that her chosen outfit was so wrinkled that she had to go and pull out the iron and do a quick touch up.
The result…late to work, frazzled and not getting her day of on the “right foot”
So one day, she and her partner were discussing their morning routine and her partner suggested to her that perhaps she would find it beneficial if she selected her clothes on Sunday, laid them out for the week, got her shoes coordinated with the outfits and did any wrinkle touch ups that might be needed before things got too crazy in the morning.
This evening she describe to me how she was just going through her clothes selection for the week, getting everything coordinated, touched up and ready to go. “My mornings are so much better, especially now that we’ve had our baby.” “I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if I on top of everything else, I had to go through my old clothes routine.
Prevention is one of the foundations of stress resilience. By identifying and anticipating where your stress is coming from (based on your experience, knowledge of what the future holds and just plain paying attention) you can begin to develop specific strategies and tactics to minimize the impact of these events and create more ease in your life. And while we’ll never get around to 100% ease, part of the plan is to have as much of it in our lives as we can.
