De-Stress, De-Clutter and Prioritize to Improve Your Health

Stress can increase hormones and other biomarkers associated with health risks, including cortisol, glycogen production and release, LDL cholesterol and inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein and cytokines.

During sleep, stress hormones signal the body’s immunological system to “take out the garbage” from minor muscle breakdown caused by the day’s activity and to produce a fresh supply of new, healthy cells, resupplying our bodies with ready energy. When we wake, hunger reflects our natural desire to “refill the tank” after the previous night’s recovery.

Lowering your stress can improve a number of biomarkers for serious health risks.

Get moving

• Engage in regular physical activity every other day. It doesn’t have to be a sweatfest; just walking the dog can help you clear your mind.

Relax

• Practice self-relaxation and calming exercises like deep breathing, meditation, mindfulness exercises, yoga, tai chi, or guided visualization. iPhone and Android apps make it easy to try out meditation on your own.
• Treat yourself to a massage, a nap, or just quiet time in a peaceful place by yourself, without your cell phone, video games, or the TV.

Protect your sleep quality

• Do your best to go to bed around the same time and maintain a consistent sleep schedule.
• Don’t do anything in bed that trains you to stay awake, like watching TV or checking social media or playing games on your phone. This is especially important if you travel frequently and don’t have the normal environmental cues to trigger sleep, such as setting your alarm and tucking into your own bed with your own pillow, sheets, and blankets.

De-clutter

• Once each week, consolidate all your reminders into one place.
• Group tasks by location. Now it’ll be easier to remember to pick up pet food on the way to the hairdresser, discuss vacation and project timelines next time you’re meeting with your boss. For this exercise, you can treat the Internet as a location. That way, you’ll remember to order shower hooks and AA batteries next time you’re “at” Amazon.
• If you’re interrupted during a task, take a second to note where you left off. It’ll make it so much easier to re-start when you come back to it.

Prioritize

• For every new item that lands on your to-do list, try to resolve an older one. One item on, one item off.
• If something can’t be taken care of right away, set it aside.
• If it’s been deferred twice already, do it, delegate it, or delete it.
• It’s also a good idea to have a “someday” category for things you want to remember, but don’t need to take action on.