It’s official, we have finally moved!  I know I haven’t mentioned much on here about us having to move, mostly because we weren’t really looking to move.  We found out in February from our landlord that she was not renewing our lease and that we had until May to find a new place.  Needless to say we were a little shocked.

From that point it was a mad dash to try and find a new place in the area and within our price range.  Because we were not expecting this, it was obviously a bit of a stressful situation.  I’ve mentioned it before in the wedding post, I do not tend to handle stress very well.  I pretty much turn into a huge mess and no one really wants to deal with me.  Plus it messes with my health big time.  My acne flares up, my digestion goes haywire, I become more susceptible to illnesses, and overall, I just feel awful.

Knowing this about myself, I was determined not to let that happen to me this time around.  One of my health goals this year is to really work on how I manage stress, as well as how I react to stress.  An unexpected move seemed like the perfect stressful situation to try and work through.  I know that everyone goes through stressful times in their lives, so I thought that I would share with you some of the steps I took this time around to try and minimize/manage my stress.  You can tailor these to your specific needs and hopefully they will help you out as much as they did for me!

Accept the stressful situation.  Huh? Yes, I said accept.  I am a person who loves to have control over every aspect of my life.  Unfortunately, life does not care about that and will inevitably throw curve balls your way, causing you stress.  It has taken me a very long time to learn and begin to accept the fact that there are just some times when I will not be able to control a problem.  I had no control over the fact that my landlord was not going to renew my lease.  Nor did I have control over the fact that I had less than three months to find a new home and move.  Worrying or stressing over the situation was going to get me nowhere, so rather than let it bring me down I decided to just accept the fact that this was happening and move on from there.  I am not saying you have to be happy about unplanned stress in your life, but there are times when all the worrying and fretting will amount to nothing.  In fact, it will just add to your misery.  So once that curve ball is thrown your way, take a deep breath, accept that this is happening and move forward.  Which leads to my next point…

Make a plan.  Once you accept that some stress is going to enter your life, create a plan to help and work through that stress.  For me, creating a timeline showing how we would deal with the situation helps to lessen the stress.  For this move, I made a timeline of when certain things needed to be completed.  The time when we needed to find a new place, the time we needed to tell our landlord, the time when we needed to start packing, and the date we needed to move by.  Having checkpoints for me to reference helped me feel more in control of the situation and it also helped to make sure we were getting things done in time.  Having a basic outline of how you can tackle your dilemma will help you to feel more in control of your situation.

Realize there will be hiccups.  Even if you plan down to the very last detail, there will probably still be some unforeseen issues that will arise.  Clearly there is no way to make sure everything goes 100% smoothly, 100% of the time.  By knowing that beforehand, it can make it a little easier to deal with the little things that pop up.  Don’t let those little things stress you more, handle them in the best way possible and keep moving towards your ultimate goal.

These tips are obviously of the broader type, meant to be utilized in most types of stressful situations.  Here are some of the more specific things that I did to deal with this move and not freak out.

1. I asked for help.  This is a huge thing for me because I generally have the attitude of I can do it all by myself.  I have learned the hard way that I can NOT do it by myself, and I have a ton of people in my life who are more than willing to help me when I need.  All I have to do is ask them.  I asked both my parents and my in-laws for help with the move as well as my sister and to our surprise and delight, some of Adam’s friends offered to help us the day of our move.  Everyone was ready and willing to help and never once made it feel like it was a huge inconvenience.  I was overwhelmed with their gusto and both Adam and I were super appreciative.

2.  I started packing early.  Instead of trying to jam all the packing into just one day, I spread it out over a few weeks.  This helped it to seem less overwhelming and made the process go fairly smoothly.  Plus, with the way the timing worked out on our lease, we were able to move some things in stages, which REALLY made the actual moving day less stressful.

3.  I became best friends with my slow cooker.  I was already on fairly good terms with my slow cooker before this move, but I really gave it a work out that whole weekend.  Because I knew that I would not have the time (or quite frankly the energy) to make healthy dinners, I planned to have three slow cooker meals for that weekend.  It was so simple to just throw the ingredients in in the morning and have a delicious meal at the end of a long day.  It was so important for me to eat, and eat healthy, so that I could function properly.  I also made sure to save some leftovers from the week before so that we could also have quick lunches ready.

All these things helped to greatly reduce my stress levels this past weekend.  Did I still freak out and have to calm down? Of course.  Like I said before, this was my first real test of better handling a stressful situation.  There were times I felt like crying and giving up, but rather than bottle that up and let it destroy me, I talked with Adam or my friends and family.  They were able (and happy) to listen and offer advice and encouragement and it really made a difference.  I experienced none of my usual health problems, and in fact have felt even better than I did before the move!  You can work through a stressful situation and come out better on the other side.  Just take some time to compose yourself, create a plan of attack, and call on the ones who love you to lend a helping hand!

I hope that these tips can help you guys out whenever life gives you some lemons and that you are able to better maintain a healthy life while dealing with adversity.  I think that I am going to start writing more about what Adam and I do to eat healthy throughout the week.  I think it will be helpful for those of you out there who might not be sure what to do to even start eating better and taking care of your health.  Again, if you have any suggestions just let me know! I would love to hear from you!  I hope you all had a fabulous weekend and are ready to attack the week ahead with some energy!