Let’s face it, most moms today are overwhelmed and stressed out.  I say moms because I am one, but this applies to everyone – men, women, and unfortunately even children.

Most people know how bad extreme stress is for our health. Yet we still live with it because making big changes (to remove the stress) is hard. And sometimes, the stress isn’t in our power to remove.

My life is pretty wonderful and I wouldn’t change it. But it is stressful. I run a business. I homeschool. I parent 8 children. All the interactions and the constant change inevitably leads to stress.

For me, the biggest cause of stress is when I feel overwhelmed and feel like I can’t catch up. So I do everything I can to limit that sensation in my life.  I make sure that I keep plenty of margin in my life and I often say no to things that I would really like to say yes to. I keep to the basics so that I don’t overwhelm my workload and my schedule.

But even doing this, with 8 children and a business, there is a certain amount of stress that is always going to be in my life.  I recognize this, and I accept it, and I work very hard to take care of myself so that my body can process the effects of stress in my life.

Some of my daily stress relieving activities are:

• read my Bible
• eat right
• drink water
• sleep well
• exercise
• time with Jim

When I’m not stressed, it’s pretty easy to do these things. The challenge, of course, comes from the fact that when things become crazy busy, taking care of myself is usually the first thing that gets pushed aside.

And if I stop doing the items in the list, things go downhill really fast. So I’ve built in some systems to make sure that I’m getting reminders even when life gets chaotic. I’ll be talking about these in the upcoming days.

It’s a constant balancing act, but then again, so is motherhood and life in general.

What about you? What do you do to manage the stress in your life that you can’t get rid of?