5 New Things I’m Incorporating Into My Weekly Routine to Help with Stress

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Hi friends, happy Tuesday and happy MARCH!! Wow, it seems like it’s been forever since I’ve hopped on here to say hi, and I guess it has been a good while. I usually like to at least try to have 1-2 new posts minimum on the blog each week, but the last couple of week really threw me for a whirl, as I’m sure it did all of us. During the winter storm, we lost power at our house for about 5 days. It was COLD with a capital C, to say the least! I always thought I loved the cold weather, and I still do, however that being said, I am definitely ready for March to bring spring weather and warmer temps.

Anyways, between the winter storm this year, getting COVID back in January, my work/pay schedule getting thrown for a loop between those two things, etc… I realized I needed a change. I feel like I’ve been stressed out and a bit anxious for a while now just due to everything last year with the pandemic and things changing (I’m not great with change, it takes me a while to adjust to new things). So I decided to start making some small changes to my weekly routine to help try and achieve some “inner peace.”

So far, I’m happy with the progress! I think I’m a naturally stressed and worried person so it’s helped me to try to incorporate some new things into my normal routine that are specifically focused on taking care of myself. If you find yourself feeling like this lately, try incorporating some of these easy things into your everyday/weekly routine and see if you can notice a change!

1. Walking

At the beginning of quarantine last April, Jordan and I started walking every single day outside to get some fresh air and keep from feeling cooped up. We would walk up the hill to our mailbox after I got off work each day (about a half mile walk there and back) and we felt so good to be able to get out and get some light exercise in the sun each day. We were talking a few weeks ago about getting back into working out regularly (we both kinda fell off the band wagon around the holidays and then immediately after, when we had COVID). I told him I wanted to start walking again, especially once I started getting my stress headaches starting again, and he agreed! Not to mention, being out in the sun each day and getting some vitamin D makes me feel happier and healthier overall. So, we’re trying to walk at least 2-3 times a week outside, weather permitting and so far, I can definitely notice that this has started to help me with relaxing, feeling less stressed and feeling overall just happier!

2. Nightly Tea Time

I’ve always been a huge tea drinker. I actually drink green tea during the day everyday instead of coffee! J and I started drinking tea every night sometime last year, but again, once the holidays rolled around, we were thrown off our normal schedule and hadn’t yet made it back to normal. However, now I’ve been making it a point each evening to make tea and set aside some time to drink it before bed. I’ve noticed this helps me snack less at night too and since I drink kinds like Sleepy Time Tea or Bed Time Tea, they help me fall asleep.

3. High Intensity Workouts/Cardio

This is something I’ve been doing on and off for a while, but I’m making a point to stick with it this time and make sure I do 3-4 cardio-intense workouts each week. I’ve always been very active throughout my life. Throughout elementary/middle/high school and college, I did baton twirling and practiced for multiple hours each day. I also did tumbling and gymnastics and ran Varsity Track in high school. In college, I would go run at midnight every night at a 24 hour gym when there would be almost no one where and I would just run for miles, until I felt the stress from my classes and the day wear off me. When I got my first job out of college a few years ago, I had to adjust to a whole new schedule and I’ve never really felt like I got back into a good routine with working out. I was speaking to my doctor a few weeks ago about my headaches and he said he thought that stress was a large contributor to why I was getting such bad head pains. He suggested doing high intensity workouts that have a lot of cardio in them to help relieve stress and get my body back to what it was used to for so long. So, I’m trying to start back with 3-4 cardio-intensive workouts a week (normally on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to give myself some rest days in between) to get back into shape, and hopefully add more after I get used to that.

4. Daily Journaling

This is something I did all through high school and college, but kinda fell out of the habit when I graduated and started grad school/working full time. With my first “career job,” I worked long days for a 9/80 schedule (which, honestly I LOVED) but it really took some getting used to to get up at 5am and go to work for 10 hours. The first few months, I would come home from work, take a nap, wake up and eat dinner/shower/get ready for bed and do homework for my MBA classes, then immediately fall back asleep. Not to mention, I soon started Chaos and Coffee and then basically had ZERO free time to do anything outside of my schedule. I used to always love journaling though because I felt like it pulled my day together and helped me wrap everything up for that particular day, if that makes sense. Since I’ve been feeling so much more stressed lately, I figured this would be a good way to help decompress at the end of each day and just get all of my feelings out on paper.

5. Yoga/Stretching

I’ve never been one for yoga, simply because I’ve never really been able to sit still and get as relaxed as you’re supposed to in yoga. I tried it once in college and that was pretty much the extent of my yoga experiences. However since I felt myself getting more and more stressed lately, I figured it would be worth it to give it another try. I tried doing one of the Yoga courses on the Sweat app, which is what I use for a lot of workouts, but I didn’t really like the Yoga courses on there and I had a hard time feeling motivated to do them. I had heard from someone that Yoga with Adriene on YouTube was a good one, so I decided to give that a try and see if it would be something for me. Plus it’s free, so this was a huge bonus, since I wasn’t really sure if yoga was something I would really like or not. I’ve only done it a few times so far, but so far I’m liking Yoga with Adriene and feel like it’s really easy to follow along with, especially if you’re a beginner. I want to start doing yoga 2-3 times a week (maybe Tuesday, Thursday, and one day on the weekends) so I’m optimistic about the positive effects this will bring!

There you have it! Those are 5 things I’m trying to focus on and incorporate lately into my weekly routine to help out with my stress. If you find yourself being more stressed out lately, try incorporating some of these daily/weekly things to see if it helps you relax a little bit. Above all, remember that it’s been a rough time lately friends so give yourself grace.

Thanks for reading lovelies and I hope everyone has a lovely weekend. Xx.