Karen's 6 Stress-Busting Strategies

I feel an obligation since I've written a lot about thinking positively to say something about negative feelings. Many of you told me you read "Think and Grow Rich," a book about how to achieve your goals,--a book I suggested a while back. I am following many of the ideas in the book including reading my goals statement morning and night.

However, I have to say at one point I noticed that reading the goals statement was making me agitated…I did put it aside for a while and came back to it later. The book tells us to believe and not fear…but if one has fears…then what?

I'm not a psychologist and I'm not going to tell you what to do with your bad feelings. But I'll tell you how I live with mine. I release them into a journal…or I run or garden or all three.

I've honed a set of self-care skills over the years. I've been an artist all my life and a classroom teacher for several years. I've been a parent for nearly 9 years and a small businessperson for the last 5 years. I tell you this so you know I don't avoid stress.

As small businesspeople we are putting out a lot of energy, meeting new people, keeping in touch with people, working in our business and coming up with new ideas. Businesses don't grow unless we try new things and get out the comfort zone etc. However, to get out of the comfort zone we have to have energy. If we don't have ways to eschew depletion and fill ourselves up…our energy will lag and we will become sick or lose our spark.

Here's my list of rejuvenating practices and some notes about my experience with each:

Journaling: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron is an excellent resource about discovering or recovering your creative self. One practice she describes in detail is called "daily pages" in which you write 3 stream of consciousness pages without pausing or editing. I've found that this practice helps me get out my negative feelings and solve problems rapidly. Any "problem" grows wearisome fast…and I therefore solve it.

Exercise; special mention of yoga and tai chi: To state the obvious, exercise is essential to health. Scientifically, we know that exercise releases adrenaline, which makes us feel up. Usually people focus on how exercise keeps weight down or makes us feel good. However, I believe the benefits of exercise go deeper much than this to regulate our hormones and maintain the health of all the "systems" of the body.

If aerobic exercise releases adrenaline and makes us feel up, yoga and tia chi focus on our breathing and stretching the spine, which releases stress and calms the mind and body.

Time alone: This is a key to health that hasn't always been obvious to me. Time alone doing something I enjoy is rejuvenating and also essential. Try a walk, a trip to the bead, hardware, library or antique store. Or doing some work with your hands like baking, woodworking, knitting etc. An hour or two once a week makes a huge difference.

Time with friends: Make time for friendship and all kinds of connections. As a young parent I saw with fresh eyes how interdependent we are. We need other people…both as parents and as business people we need support. We need others to succeed. We need clients and referrals to clients to succeed and mentors to really fly.

Prayer and meditation: I make use of these too. Recently I've prayed a lot because several friends have been ill. I wrote out a prayer and memorized it so that when I started to worry I knew exactly what I was going to substitute in its place and switch gears. It made a huge difference to my energy and outlook to pray for healing, peace and strength and kept me going.

[As a related aside: If you are interested in spirituality and business visit http://www.heartofbusiness.com/ and sign up for the Business Heart newsletter on making money, avoiding burnout and grow your business with the engagement of your heart.]

Reading for Diversion and Relaxation: As you probably know I read a lot. I was a bookworm as a child. But the last few years I've moved from reading for pleasure to reading for information about business, success and kids. I rediscovered that reading for pleasure is very relaxing. Read books that are humorous, entertaining or transport you to another world.

I'm realizing this is probably one of the most personal articles I've written. It's worth getting personal if it's helpful to some others. By using my downtime to rejuvenate and building it into my week, I'm able to care for my family, run a business with Tod, be a leader in two networking groups and pursue my artwork. Feel free to write me about your stress-busting ideas. Schedule exercise into your week and watch your energy go up.