4 Tips to Make Life Less Stressful and Relieve Anxiety

Make Life Less Stressful = Less Anxiety

1. You Have Needs! Often as Christian women, we forget that fact or we conveniently push it aside because we're trying to meet other people's needs and we think, that's okay, I can handle this. We push it aside and push it aside. Really, we can't afford to push it aside. So, there are some things that we do need, like to be able to see, to drive, for instance. We need to be able to set the way that we pace ourselves during the day because the way we live each day determines the way we live our lives. When we are able to take control of our schedule, to acknowledge our needs and to sufficiently meet them, as well as to live out the values that we have and what we believe and what we're called to, we can start building a successful life. As Christian women, it's okay to know that we have these higher callings and these higher values and also that we are humans with needs. So being able to recognize your own needs and that you don't have to apologize for that. I'm bringing it up today as an example. But I didn't have to come on and say, hey, I actually didn't go to the gym on Monday because I wasn't lying. I wasn't doing anything that didn't have integrity to it. I simply had a different set of circumstances come up that made that not the course of action I thought I was going to take. I wouldn't have to owe an apology or explain myself or anything just for meeting my needs. There's nothing wrong with meeting my needs. I had to rearrange some things with my kids, too, that I had planned and that I had said, yes, I would do, and then I just couldn't physically do, and that's okay. We have to realize that our yes being yes and our no being no is absolutely integrity and biblical. There's also truth to the fact that there are things that, when we said yes or no, may have come up that we weren't considering at the beginning. If we can follow through, great, but something like being unsafe simply to keep our word and put other people at risk would not have been wise. So, we're talking about these real needs that, just as human beings, they do come up, sometimes conveniently, sometimes inconveniently, and we need to be aware that, wait, there's a real need here that I have right now. I am grateful for grace, and I am grateful for God's kindness and His understanding. If it weren't for this, I would have gone to the gym. I would have kept those appointments with my kids, but this was basically an emergency, and the need was that I take care of what I had right in front of me that needed to be done because it was urgent and it was important and it was necessary, and it was wise and it was safe, and it was good for all concerned. I want you to think about those things in life that you need because they're good for all concerned. The things that you need that are good for all concerned. You need to be able to be healthy or to the best of your ability, because if you don't have your health, your physical health, your mental health, your emotional and spiritual health, that is something that rubs off on others and affects them. Just as if I had driven with those dilated pupils, it would have affected other people, for sure. Not only me, but we often think, oh, I'm just sacrificing my own comfort, my own needs, and that's okay. But I want you to really flip it and see how when you minimize the fact that you have actual needs, you're actually potentially hurting other people, spilling your stuff over into their lives, causing them to have hardships because you didn't take responsibility for your own stuff. So, the first thing is to recognize your own needs.
2. People don't have to understand for it to still be okay, to recognize that you have needs. So, to make up for not going to the gym today, I went to the park, and I walked for my half hour because that's my goal, is to walk for half an hour. I walked, and it was beautiful, and it was a great time, and it was refreshing, and I had time with the Lord, and I had time to think. As I was walking, I passed a woman who did not want to talk. The way that I knew that she did not want to talk is on both passes. coming and going, we were at a place where we passed each other, and on both passes she put her head down, walked a bit away, and she had sunglasses on, and she was not engaging. Both times I was willing to say hi. She was not engaging. There were other people that I passed who looked right at me, "Hi, or how you doing?" Really nice greetings. I'm not judging the woman who had her head down. She most likely had needs. Maybe they were to not have to extrovert, not put herself out there for people because she's been having a house full of company all week. Or maybe she just got sad news and needed to walk it off. Or maybe this was her time to pray and she wasn't paying attention to what was around her. I don't know. For whatever reason, she needed not to engage with the people walking by her. And that's okay. I didn't need to understand why. I just needed to allow that she may be somewhere else than where I am on the journey. She was walking, and I was walking, but where she was on her journey was a place where she wasn't capable or choosing to speak to anybody else. On my journey, I was in a good place where I was able to do that. I was able to reach out, and whoever wanted to say hi, I was able to do that. But there have been times where I have not been in that place. And it wasn't necessarily because I wanted to be mean or rude or unfriendly, anything like that. It was because I wasn't in that place. We're all on our own individual journeys, and to be able to honor that for ourselves as well as for other people is really important, because no one gets through this life on the exact same path. Every person has a unique path. And you have no idea. I have no idea. Only God knows what a person is fully experiencing, even of ourselves. We don't know what we're fully experiencing. Haven't you ever prayed and found clarity after you've prayed? All of a sudden stuff the Lord knew and was able to reveal things that make so much more sense than what you could figure out in your own mind? I know I have. And that's the kind of thing that we need to realize. None of us has the corner on all of this knowledge, but God does. So, if somebody is not aware of where you are on your journey or you're not aware of where they are on theirs, that's okay. Out of those values of being Christlike, caring about people, loving people, serving people, it's okay to do those things, to pray for them, to see if you can help someone. Also, maybe you're the one who needs help sometimes. Maybe you're the one who needs someone to minister to you. Even Jesus took time to step away to rest and pray. He had so much that he was doing as both human and God on this planet when he walked around in a human body, and he took time away to meet the needs that he had with himself and the Lord. So why would we be any exception? So, allowing that grace to ourselves and allowing that grace to others is really important. Another is the needs, and then the other is that others don't have to understand.
3. Other people do not have to understand where you are on your journey for your journey to be valid; you don't need to be validated. How many times I've heard these people on cooking shows and such, oh, I won this. It was such validation. Well, yeah, it probably is, but is that validation really needed? If it is, then there's some work that could possibly be done inside to know that, wait, I'm validated by God, or I'm proud of myself. External validation does feel good; I'm not going to deny that, but people don't necessarily need that validation if they have it from God and from within themselves. Sometimes you're not going to get that validation from the people around you. Sometimes they will not understand. They won't get it because they've not been on your journey, and you can't expect that they can get it or that it means they don't care. It doesn't necessarily mean they don't care, or they don't love you. It may just be they honestly, in their capacity, do not understand. That doesn't change the fact that you do have needs, and you don't need to have people understand you for those needs to be valid. 
4. It's important be flexible as well as have a routine. When I was in college, I went to Messiah College before it became so big and became a university. I still have a hard time calling it Messiah University because it's like Messiah College, and that's the point. It's a small, private, liberal arts Christian college in Pennsylvania. It's no longer so small, and it is now a university. During my time at Messiah, we had a class called life fitness, and life fitness was where we had to track how much exercise we did during the week. During the semester, we would track types of exercise, and today, as I was walking, that half hour walk that I'm trying to set into a routine, you're catching the theme here of I'm on my journey, doing what I need to, to take care of my own health, my own wellness, to continue to be true to the routine and the commitments I've set to work to be healthy, to take that time for my physical body as well as spiritual and mental, because all of that works together. I feel better when I'm out in the fresh air as well or go to the gym. So, the emotional, too, it's a really healthy thing to do. I have set an intention, a commitment, and now I'm trying to set a routine around this. And at Messiah, they had us learn how to make it life fitness. It wasn't gym class. It was life fitness. It was something that could be incorporated into our lives, so that it was sustainable. And as I was walking today, I'm thinking, they knew something. These people, these professors in this life fitness class knew something, and they taught it to me. Now, I haven't used it much over the years, only periodically, but it really hit home today where I realized there were people who knew how this worked. They knew that if you set up a routine to do something physically that you enjoy, and I happen to like walking, that it is something you can stick with. It can be a part of the habits, the acts, the things that you do on a day-to-day basis or a weekly basis or whatever makes up the quality of your life.

Think about These for Yourself:

1. What are the needs that you have?
2. Are they being recognized by others, or are others incapable at this point, of recognizing those individual needs? And is that okay? Are there still things that you are committed to, things that you will find a way to get met because they're healthy and important, godly, set according to your values or your needs, or your health goals, or whatever it may be?
3. Are you able to hold space for yourself and where you are, as well as where someone else is on their journey?
4. It is important to be able to be flexible. We're not saying to say sin is okay, but we're saying to have grace and to be flexible, because things come up and people aren't always where we are, we're not always where we expect to be.