Stress Management: What Can I Add?

This season of life is just hard, and stressful. I want things to change, and yet I realize that we cannot change much about our situation. There is just a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. Since I can't take anything away from my life, I started asking, "What can I add?" It seems like a counterintutive question, but if I can find some joy by adding things to my life, maybe it will balance out what stress subtracts. 

Here are a few of my recent "adds":

Downtime: Getting up early is annoying, but if I get up early enough to start the day slowly and not rush, it helps. I spend more time (when I have it) just lying around, too. It feels lazy and wasteful, but sometimes I just have nothing else to give. Pushing myself further just increases my stress.

Music: I spend hours at a time in the kitchen Friday/Saturday/Sunday cleaning up from the past week and prepping for the next one. I have started playing Pandora or other music from my phone or the Bose speaker while I do so. Sometimes I sing along. Sometimes I don't. Overall, the music seems to make the tasks at hand more bearable, and a little less tedious.

Podcasts: I spend hours upon hours commuting to and from work. Instead of listening to the radio or pondering the work day, I have added some fun podcasts. Some are educational. Some are encouraging. Some just occupy my mind. There is time and space for thinking, but sometimes I do it too much.

Purposeful quiet: Though I do try to fill some of my time with music and podcasts, I also take time to turn everything off for a few minutes and think/pray. The space feels novel and new. As long as the quiet is calming, I do it. If anxious thoughts start to rage, I switch back to one of the above silence fillers.

Tea: I drink tea almost every morning. But sometimes I drink it at lunch (when I am home) or dinner. Tea has a calming effect on me. It helps slow down my mind. It causes me to sit down a little longer. Both can be beneficial for stress management.

Walking breaks: Dr. Bruce Perry says that regular rhythmic activity helps cancel out the negative effects of stress. So every hour that I can (at work and at home), I try to get up and walk around a little bit. It helps clear my mind.

I haven't added much. I can't add much. What I can, I am doing, and I leave the rest up to the Lord. May He increase wisdom and add where I cannot.