Simplify Your Life, Reduce Stress and Increase Your Productivity

Stress is an unavoidable reality of the modern life. We all encounter varying degrees of stress and stressors in our lives. However, when the intensity or duration of the stress we face exceeds our ability to manage that stress, something is going to break down.Health, relationships, professional life...you name it.

Stress really IS part of life, but it doesn't have to rule your life. If stress is draining you and burning you out, take some advice from those who have left their stress behind - simplify your life.

A cluttered mind, endless To-Do list and environment is the surefire road to stressville.

"Life Is Really Simple, But We Insist On Making It Complicated." ~ Confucius

A simple life has a different meaning and a different value for every person.

For me it means be in control of my life, honor my values and live my priorities, do what I love and what I consider important.

Today I can say I am an expert of simplifying my life and making it less stressed: during the last 15 years I changed 4 countries and 7 homes and consequently reasonably simplified my life.

I love my balanced life today but it took some time, knowledge and conscious choice to learn to manage stress and de-clutter my out of balance life and myself heading into burnout state.

Simplify does not mean eradicate.

To simplify is to make less complex not to cut things out. Reducing and integrating can lead to simplification as well.

First, answer the question, please.

What Simplify Your Life means to you?

- Destress your life, increase energy, declutter from your life so you can spend time with people you love and do the things you love?
- Get rid of the clutter so you what are left gives you value?
- Mean to mange stress and increase your productivity?
- Stop letting little things keep you from living the life of your dreams?
- Your goals becoming your accomplishments?

Now it is your turn to create your list.(Please share your list and leave a comment )

However, getting to simplicity isn't always a simple process.

You can find following steps useful:

1.Identify what's most meaningful to you.
2.Eliminate the rest:
- If your projects, clients, social opportunities have been eluding you, give them up.

- Avoid overexposure to negative or toxic people, nurture the relationships that support you and help you to (stay positive).

- Don't let anything drain you.( Tolerate nothing, eliminate tolerations). You are your most precious asset and you have to put yourself on the top of the list. Nobody, believe me, nobody else will ever do this.

- Pursue those areas where there is more likehood of a positive return on the energy and time you invest.

- Know yourself, know your limits.

- (Honor your priorities) otherwise you will finish in (burnout)t even without noticing it.

Too much to do and too little time? Life places many demands on superwomen energy and time. These demands are often exacerbated by unrealistic expectations and a sense of urgency.

Many times women feel overwhelmed by stress and all things that are on their plates. This is often a trigger for eating comfort foods, or for eating at inappropriate times.

Important part of fit, balanced and ageless life is about simplifying and reducing the clutter of your busy schedule, your work life, all the running around you might normally do. Doing so you take care your real needs and reduce stress-induced eating.

Reduce commitments

The most important thing you can do to simplify your schedule is to list all your commitments, and pick the most important ones.

Commitments include everything that takes up your time, from work projects to side jobs to serving on civic committees to coaching for your kids' soccer team to renovating your home to serving on a PTO or other school committee.

These commitments are easy to say "yes" to, but they fill up our lives as they accumulate,until we're so busy we have no time for what's really important to us.

Simple life suggests we reduce these commitment to just the most important, leaving room in our lives for what we love most and leaving space so we're not as stressed out.

To do this, make a list of every commitment you can think of. Anything you do on a regular basis, or that you've committed to doing in the near term or long term. Now mark this list: what are the 4-5 most important commitments? The things you love most, that are most valuable to you.

These are your top priorities. Everything else should be removed, if at all possible.To remove commitments, you need to make a phone call or send an email informing people that you can no longer commit to something.

This is difficult and uncomfortable, because it means saying "no" to people, and often disappointing them. But you know what?They'll live, and their projects and lives will go on.

While it's difficult to disappoint people, it's rarely as bad as we fear. This is a slow process of removal -- there will be some commitments you can't get out of right away. But if you keep in mind that you want to eventually get rid of all non-essential commitments, you'll slowly get out of them,either by saying "no" or when the commitments are finished naturally.

It's important, from this point on, to try to say "no" to all requests for commitments if they're not on your essential list -- things you really love doing. You should want to say "Hell yes" to new commitments -- or say no.

Don't just say yes. Once you've gotten rid of non-essential commitments, your life (plate) will be freed to do the things you've always wanted to do.