Clutter is something we all have a little bit of here and there – at the house or at your office work area. Sometimes, our lives get a little bit too busy that we tend to take cleaning and organizing stuff for granted, putting it off and mentally promising to de-clutter once we get an open window of free time in our hands until over time, clutter starts to overtake our lives, causing emotional stress and mental stress. Just looking at the pile of mess inside your house or your work place and thinking about just how much of a mess the place is can stress you out! Because your house or your office is one big place of clutter, you tend to have trouble finding things as well like your money, your keys, maybe even your favourite shoes which can definitely be a stressful exercise!

And because stress is bad for one’s health, you need to eliminate all kinds of stress causing factors in your life like for instance clutter.

So here are some tips to de-stress by de-cluttering:

Stress busters Tip #1: Divide and Conquer – your stuff that is
Get four boxes and label each one: things to donate, things to throw away, things to keep and things to store. Go room by room and start picking up items and putting them in their proper box. Be honest! This is the only way you’ll ever get rid of the mess and become clutter stress free! Once that’s done, the next step to banishing stress is to have proper storage area for the stuff that you’re keeping.

Stress busters Tip #2: Create Beauty
De-cluttering and organizing your place is a great way to reduce stress. But you can further reduce stress by adding a few nice touches that can make your home the ideal haven for you to relax. This is a great way to get stress relief!

Stress busters Tip #3: Organize
Another way to eliminate stress by de-cluttering is through organization. Make sure to keep your loose changes in a coin bank. Hang your clean clothes in your closet and throw your dirty ones in the laundry. Have a place to keep your bills too! You’ll easily combat stress by knowing where to find your stuff whenever you need them!

Stress busters Tip #4: Pick a Schedule and Stick to It
Another stress relief tip: to prevent clutter from piling up. Make a commitment to schedule a certain time or day for de-cluttering to keep your clutter from invading your home and keeping stress caused by clutter  at bay. Set aside 20 minutes each day to tackle one area of the house or you can set aside one day out of the week like the weekend to de-clutter and remove the mess in the house.

Stress busters Tip #5: Do your Laundry
A pile of dirty clothes can also be stressful to look at. Just thinking about the heavy load can be stressful! So make a commitment to also tackle the laundry that never seems to get done.

Stress busters Tip #6: Garbage
Part of your combat stress plan should be taking out the garbage. After all, the only way to get rid of your clutter related stress is to get your clutter out of the house! Set out garbage bags for your clutter. Use plastic bags from your grocery shopping. Throw away all the obvious garbage and recycle whenever possible.

Stress busters Tip #7: Donate
You the saying one man’s trash is someone else’s treasure? Well this is a great saying to remember by when you’re on a mission to eliminate stress caused by clutter. Donate your old stuff – stuff you no longer use or like. Not only is this a great way to combat stress, you’re also helping others out!

Stress busters Tip #8:  Repeat
Of course the only way to permanently eliminate stress from your home or your office is to keep doing the stress busting tips given above, otherwise, clutter and stress will come to haunt you again!

Stress is everywhere and you may seem like there’s nothing you can do to stop stress. As the bills keep coming, the errands pile up and career and family responsibilities that are demanding, you start to feel your stress levels going up, up and the very feeling of being stressed out can add emotional stress on your already stressed out mind and body.  The truth though is that you have a lot more control than you might think.  In fact, the simple realization that you’re in control of your life is the foundation of stress management.
Stress management is all about taking charge: of your thoughts, your emotions, your schedule, your environment and the way you deal with problems. The ultimate goal of stress management is a balanced life, with time for work, relationships, relaxation, and fun – plus the resilience to hold up under pressure and meet challenges head on.
Identifying the sources of stress in your life is the first important step of stress management. Your true sources of stress aren’t always obvious, and it’s all too easy to overlook your own stress-inducing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Example is workplace stress: Sure, you may know that you’re constantly worried about work deadlines. But maybe it’s your procrastination, rather than the actual job demands, that leads to deadline stress.
To identify your true sources of stress, look closely at your habits, attitude, and excuses. Until you accept responsibility for the role you play in creating or maintaining stress, your stress level will remain outside your control.

Here are some stress management techniques for coping with stress:

Stress management techniques #1: Avoid unnecessary stress
Not all stress can be avoided, and it’s not healthy to avoid a situation that needs to be addressed. But there are a number of stressors which you can eliminate such as:
Learn how to say “no”. Taking on more than you can handle is a surefire recipe for stress so know your limits and stick to them.
Avoid people who stress you out.  If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time you spend with that person or end the relationship entirely.
Take control of your environment. If the evening news stresses you out, turn the TV off. If traffic’s your source of stress, take a longer but less-traveled route.
Avoid hot-button topics. If you get upset over religion or politics, cross them off your conversation list so you don’t experience emotional stress.
Pare down your to-do list – Analyze your schedule, responsibilities, and daily tasks and drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely so you don’t feel stressed out.
Stress management techniques #2: Alter the situation
If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. Figure out what you can do to change things so the problem doesn’t present itself in the future. Often, this involves changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life.
Stress management techniques #3: Adapt to the stressor
If you can’t change the stressor, change yourself. You can adapt to stressful situations and regain your sense of control by changing your expectations and attitude.
Stress management techniques #4: Accept the things you can’t change
Some sources of stress are unavoidable. You can’t prevent or change stressors such as the death of a loved one, a serious illness, or a national recession. In such cases, the best way to cope with stress is to accept things as they are. Acceptance may be difficult, but in the long run, it’s easier than railing against a situation you can’t change.
Stress management techniques #5: Make time for fun and relaxation
Beyond a take-charge approach and a positive attitude, you can reduce stress in your life by nurturing yourself. If you regularly make time for fun and relaxation, you’ll be in a better place to handle life’s stressors when they inevitably come.
Don’t get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of life that you forget to take care of your own needs. Nurturing yourself is a necessity, not a luxury.
Stress management techniques #6: Adopt a healthy lifestyle
You can increase your resistance to stress by strengthening your physical health.  Exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet, reduce your caffeine and sugar intake, avoid alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and get enough sleep.

	Jillian Michaels: Yoga Meltdown
	Healthy Fats and Food Choices

The best and most natural stress relief to combat stress is relaxation. By knowing how to take a break, you can actually have a powerful antidote to eliminate stress. Stress relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, visualization, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, and yoga can help you activate this stress relaxation response.

When practiced regularly, these stress relief activities can lead to a stress reduction in your everyday stress levels plus it will boost your feelings of joy and serenity. What’s more, by practicing these stress relief activities, it will also serve as protective quality by teaching you how to stay calm and collected in the face of life’s curveballs.

The Stress Relaxation Response

Nobody can avoid stress but you can learn to control stress by counteracting its negative effects. Learn to evoke the stress relaxation response, a state of deep rest that is the polar opposite of the stress response.
Stress response floods your body with chemicals that prepare you for “fight or flight” but while the stress response is helpful in true emergency situations where you must be alert, it definitely gets your body stressed out when always activated.
The stress relaxation response brings your system back into balance: deepening your breathing, reducing stress hormones, slowing down your heart rate and blood pressure, and relaxing your muscles.
Research also shows that the stress relaxation response increases energy and focus, combats stress illness, relieves aches and pains, heightens problem-solving abilities, and boosts motivation and productivity. And with a little practice, you can reap these benefits of stress relaxation response.

Stress Relaxation Exercises

There are a variety of stress relaxation techniques that can help you achieve the stress relaxation response. Try these stress relaxation exercises:
Deep breathing for stress relief
Deep breathing is the cornerstone of many other stress relaxation practices. It is a simple, yet powerful stress relaxation technique. It’s easy to learn and it can be practiced almost anywhere. It can also provide a quick way to get your stress levels in check.
Progressive muscle relaxation for stress relief
Progressive muscle relaxation is another effective and widely used strategy for stress relief. It involves a two-step process in which you systematically tense and relax different muscle groups in the body.
Practice progressive muscle relaxation regularly. This stress relaxation technique gives you an intimate familiarity with what stress tension feel like in different parts of the body. This awareness helps you spot and counteract the first signs of the muscular stress tensions.
For additional level of stress relief, you can combine deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation.
Mindfulness meditation for stress relief
Meditation is also a particularly effective stress reducer. With regular practice, mindfulness meditation actually changes the brain. It strengthens the areas associated with joy and relaxation, and weakens those involved in negativity and stress.

Guided imagery for stress relief

Visualization used as a stress relaxation technique, is a variation on traditional meditation that can help relieve stress. Guided imagery involves imagining a scene in which you feel at peace, free to let go of all stress tension and stress anxiety. Choose whatever setting is most calming to you.
You can do this stress relaxation exercise on your own, with a therapist’s help, or by using an audio recording.
Yoga for stress relief
Yoga is an excellent stress relief exercise. This stress relaxation exercise involves a series of both moving and stationary poses, combined with deep breathing. The physical and mental benefits of yoga provide a natural counterbalance to stress, and strengthen the stress relaxation response in your daily life.
Tai chi for stress relief
Tai chi is a stress relaxation exercise done through self-paced, non-competitive series of slow, flowing body movements.  These movements emphasize concentration, relaxation, and the conscious circulation of vital energy throughout the body. Tai chi is primarily practiced as a way of calming the mind, conditioning the body, and reducing stress.
Massage therapy for stress relief
Getting a massage provides deep relaxation, and as the muscles in your body relax, so does your stressed out mind. There are many simple self-massage techniques you can use to relax and release stress.
Massage can be a great stress therapy and the best way to get stress relief from massage is by getting it from a professional massage therapist. Try types like Swedish or Shiatsu, which promote overall relaxation and stress relief.

In today’s world, it is most unlikely that you have escaped all exposure to this most celebrated vehicle for quieting your mind. You may, however, have encountered some misleading information about it and formed opinions based on inaccurate data. Meditation is not the province of some oddly garbed sect where devotees shave their heads and chant themselves into a trance. Nor is it part of any particular religious organization. Buddhists may meditate, but so might Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. It is not affiliated with leftist politics, vegetarianism, animal rights, or ecology movements.

Meditation is practiced all over the world by people very different from you and very like you. In the 1970s, a meditation room was established in the Pentagon so that America’s top military officials could find some tranquility and rejuvenation amid their high-stress lives. Practiced meditators find that the sense of inner peace they can reach is critical to their ability to cope when external problems threaten to overwhelm.

Research into the physical changes that occur during meditation has been going on for decades. These studies have shown that significant, observable benefits occur.

For example:
•Lowered blood pressure
•Improved circulation
•Slowed respiration
•Reduction of harmful lactic acid in the body
•Slowed pulse rate

In addition, meditation produces a change in the electrical activity of the brain, as measured by an EEG. Scientists attribute this regulating effect to the feelings of inner peace that meditators describe.

Meditation can sound a lot like one more relaxation technique, but it’s not. In relaxation exercises, your focus is an internal one. You observe the changes in your tension level, your breathing, and your body in general. In meditation, the focus is actually external. This may sound like a major contradiction if we are looking for inner peace, but by focusing on an external object, idea, or sound, without judgment or opinion, we can free our minds. That is what meditation is.

When you begin, it may be helpful to establish a regular time and place for meditating. This will help you form the habit. People find that meditating on an empty stomach is also helpful. Avoid alcohol and any kind of medication prior to meditating. You may find that five to ten minutes of breathing or relaxation exercises will help prepare your body for the experience.

Sleep is necessary for life. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon that serves to heal the mind and body and rejuvenate the resources needed for normal daily functioning. For most of us, sleep is the easiest and most natural form of relaxation around. To an insomniac, however, sleep can seem like the holy grail. The National Sleep Institute found that over 35 percent of workers and 55 percent of managers report problems falling or staying asleep. Unfortunately, stress and insomnia seem to be bosom buddies.

No single theory on the amount of sleep our bodies actually need has ever gained complete acceptance among the experts. Most agree, however, that sleep deprivation is epidemic in Western society, especially since high-quality sleep (deep, uninterrupted, and untroubled) is elusive for many. Some sleep researchers go so far as to say that if you have to set an alarm to wake up, you are suffering some degree of sleep deprivation. If this is in fact the case, we are starting every day with depleted resources for coping. No wonder we experience so many minor everyday hassles as stressors!
So how can we take better advantage of sleep, our potential ally? First, we must determine how much sleep our bodies need. This differs substantially from one individual to another. We’d all be thrilled to say we could function perfectly on five hours per night, but in reality, only a tiny percentage of the population is truly able to do that. You must be totally honest in your assessment of your sleep needs.

If you are unsure just what your actual needs are, go to sleep at a ”reasonable hour” (9 P.M.–11 P.M.), do not set an alarm, and see how long you sleep. The tricky part of this is that in order to get a true reading, you will need to do it continuously for at least two weeks. The problem with gauging it by how long you sleep on weekends is that most of us are sleeping longer than normal in an attempt to make up for a week-long deficit.

Once you know how much sleep you need, make a conscious effort to get that much whenever you can. A good goal is four to five times per week. This may mean that you will have to start going to bed earlier. Another possible option is to adjust your work hours so you can sleep a little longer. A thirty-something colleague of mine took a four-month sabbatical a couple of years ago and was so struck by how much better she felt and functioned when she was able to get her required 8.5 hours of sleep per night that when she returned to work, she put herself and her entire staff on a flexible schedule where each one of them could choose their own arrival time and flex the rest of their hours to meet at least an eight-hour day. She tells me it’s been very successful and other managers in her firm are now trying it.

Insomnia (inability to fall asleep or stay asleep), although not truly life-threatening, is not a trivial matter to the millions who suffer from it. However, a great deal of the problem is one of mental compounding, much like sexual impotence. Let’s look at an example. Elaine goes to bed late one night after staying up until 2 A.M. preparing for an important customer meeting the next day. Although she’s tired and needs all the sleep she can still get, she lies there the rest of the night, tossing fretfully, unable to clear her mind of all the preparatory chatter. The next night she is exhausted and goes to bed early, but when she is not immediately able to fall asleep, she begins to worry: “I’ve just got to get some sleep tonight; I barely made it through today.” But another night goes by with little to no sleep. The third night the same thing occurs. Now Elaine is really getting worried and begins to think she has a serious problem, labels it insomnia, and on it goes.

Our bodies respond to stressful situations in a variety of ways, as noted in the few previous articles. Many of the physiological changes that occur within us are undesirable, unhealthy, and even dangerous if prolonged. Insomnia, fatigue, back pain, muscle stiffness, headaches, ulcers, colitis, gastritis, heart disease, cancer, and strokes have all been associated with stress and can all have debilitating effects on our bodies. In order to counteract this negative physiological impact, we must learn to reverse it. Learning to relax provides life-long control over our most vital functions.

Relaxation techniques were designed for just this purpose and have been around as long as humankind has had a written record. In addition, most of us are unable to take the time off necessary to truly unwind, so we must learn to calm our bodies more often and in quicker ways.

When you relax, your heart beat slows, your blood pressure is immediately lowered, muscle tension decreases, your body demands less oxygen, the flow of blood to your muscles and organs decreases, and your natural output of cortisone is reduced. This produces an immediate difference in the way you feel; a dramatic increase in your sense of well-being. Relaxation can be learned and doesn’t require any special equipment. In fact, it doesn’t even require a special location. Many people have reported significant positive changes as a result of practicing as little as two 15-minute relaxation exercises per day, each and every day.

Methods for releasing tension from our bodies are many and varied, with new ones being developed every year. Probably the most commonly known is massage, in all of its many forms. Because it involves two people, we explore massage a little later in this chapter, under the heading of “getting help.” In this section we focus strictly on ways of relaxing the body that don’t involve anyone but you.

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Reducing stress overload at work is similar to the approach we used with our personal life. It mainly involves analysis through prioritization. However, whether or not you are a manager (or supervisor) of others will be pivotal in your overload reduction strategy at work.

In today’s work world, thousands of people, some of them only a few years out of school, are promoted and asked to manage the work of others without any prior or subsequent training. Often the promotion is awarded on the basis of the fine work the individual did as a solo contributor. Management brings with it dozens of challenges, and unfortunately, few people are innately equipped to perform those functions adequately without good modeling and instruction.

The art and science of delegating is one of the most important ingredients in managing effectively.

The art and science of delegating is one of the most important ingredients in managing effectively. By far, the single greatest factor in reducing overload for managers is their willingness and ability to delegate. Many excellent workers drown in management because they hang on to such beliefs as ”I can do the job faster/better than anyone else” or “I just can’t trust anyone else to do it correctly” or “by the time I show her how to do it, I might as well have done it myself anyway.” These sentiments are poison to management success.

If you are in management and feeling overloaded, chances are very good that you are not delegating effectively. If you don’t believe that, at least go to several people you trust with whom you work closely (your subordinates are candidates for this, as well as management colleagues) and ask them to tell you honestly how they rate your ability and willingness to delegate.

Delegating is also your greatest tool in relieving your work overload. So even if you are already delegating, you may want to pump it up even more. It is a skill that can be learned like any other. Many good training programs exist for building your delegating skill. If you do not have access to these programs at your worksite, check with the human resources or training department at your company about public programs you might attend. If no training is available to you, there are also many good management primers that have whole chapters devoted to delegation. There are even a few books that address delegating exclusively. This presupposes, of course, that you are willing to put these new ideas into practice and let go of the old beliefs about how you are the only person in the universe who could possibly do the job right!

Many of us compound our personal lives with more activities than we can realistically juggle and continue to perform well. One strategy for limiting our commitments is to prioritize all our activities and eliminate or limit those at the bottom of the list. It is especially important at the personal level to share these strategies with friends and colleagues so that we don’t cause misunderstandings or bad feelings when we become less available or less visible. Let the important people in your life know what you’re doing and why. They will understand. And they will respect your ability and willingness to take charge of your life and make these changes.

If you are involved in professional societies, benevolent organizations, charity fund-raising groups, or clubs of the sort
that require attendance at meetings or performance of other duties, ask yourself how you are really benefiting from these memberships and what price you are paying to continue them. Yes, charitable organizations are honorable endeavors and society needs people to devote time and effort to them, but what is this commitment doing to your relationship with your children? Your spouse? Your ability to do your job? Maybe this isn’t the best time in your life to pursue altruistic ventures. A plan to devote time during your retirement years or after your kids are grown might be more realistic and sensitive to everyone involved.
One way of limiting your involvement with organizations is to step down from the time-consuming leadership positions. You can still make valuable contributions even if you’re not holding office. You’ll also give yourself a great deal more flexibility in terms of time and effort.

Limiting and prioritizing also extend to the activities we engage in with children and spouse. If you find yourself getting caught up in the commitments of your loved ones to an uncomfortable extent, you need to cut back. Once again, this first involves communication. You must share your concern and your needs. Remember: It’s about you! Don’t make them wrong for your past inability to say no. Tell them what you can and cannot do. Prioritize with them. Get them involved in helping you meet your “stress overload challenge.” They really do want to help you stay healthy and happy; it makes their lives better, too.

Eliminating a stressor often involves major life changes such as moving, leaving a relationship, going back to school, changing jobs, or taking a demotion. Many people do decide to take such action, because eliminating the stressor is the most direct way of dealing with the pressure of stress overload. Let’s evaluate whether or not there are stressors in your life that you could actually eliminate. You can try listing your stressors from three areas of your life (personal, environmental, and job/career). Using the data from the exercise and any additional ideas that occur to you, create a list of your top ten sources of negative stress.

If you are not able to fill in all ten lines, it’s not a problem. You probably have either less overall stress or you may have isolated the few critical sources that truly cause unpleasant situations in your life. Whatever number you have, if it feels complete to you, it’s right.
Further analyze your list by asking yourself which of these situations you are able and willing to completely eliminate from your life. Circle those items. You may have several items, you may have one item, you may have zero items that you are willing to eliminate.

As we begin to formulate a plan for making a major change, however, it’s important to step back and once more consider the big picture. Unless you have just recovered from a life-threatening health crisis and your doctor has told you to make drastic changes to your lifestyle immediately, don’t rush into it.
One more consideration of note: We are all different. The number of assignments or tasks or obligations with which you are comfortable may vary considerably from that of your colleagues or your boss or your friends. This isn’t about their comfort level, it’s about yours. Don’t judge yourself by anyone else’s standards or capabilities. It’s also unfair to judge them by yours.