A Seldom Thought-Of Way To Reduce Stress

Reducing stress is key to healthy living, and there are many ways to reduce stress, including

• better nutrition,
• more exercise,
• managing thoughts and emotions and
• simplifying life.

But one of the simplest ways of decreasing stress levels is little-thought of in today’s gotta-have-it-now society.

That method is being prepared.

“Prepared for what?”

Ever had a power outage and after a couple hours wondered if you were going to lose all the meat in your freezer? I did once. Except it turned out not to be a power outage; some juvenile delinquent had stolen the meter from the outside of my condo.

In the meantime, I had to ask around to find a neighbor if she had enough room to store my food in her freezer. I had no other way to save my frozen things.

More than once in my younger, more naive years I ran out of gas in my car. Did I have extra gas in my trunk? Nope.

In both instances, how to reduce stress would have been being better prepared for the respective problems.

Granted, running out of gas is something I could have easily predicted. But I don’t know when some freak storm might blow through and wreak havoc with the city power lines for a week. Or some kind of natural disaster might mess up the city’s water supply system.

The bizarre arctic fronts that swept through the United States this past February caused my north Texas suburban neighbors to swarm grocery stores and gas pumps before they hit. Why? They didn’t have any emergency store of food or gas.

Again, the meteorologists gave everyone a heads-up on that one, but the cold snap that effectively shut down the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a week could have gone on longer than predicted. Then most people would have been in trouble.

And if you work for somebody else, you never know when you might lose your job. There are few ways to reduce stress in such a circumstance, and one is to have extra store of necessities so you don’t need to go into debt just to put food on the table while you are in between jobs.

Basic preparation

It doesn’t take a lot of time, effort or money to be prepared for unexpected emergencies. And when you do, it becomes one of the key ways to reduce stress. The following list is not comprehensive, but enough to get you started.

• Enough non-perishable food to last at least a month. Include mostly foods you would eat anyway, and a variety.
• Enough water to last at least a month. Buy a few three-gallon containers that some grocery store carry, and you can have that done in a jiffy.
• Extra supply of personal hygiene items, such as toilet paper, oral hygiene products, shampoo, etc.
• Extra vinegar and baking soda. There are a million uses for each.
• A small generator, at least enough to run your refrigerator for a few hours. You could even have a single solar panel to power it so it will run even logner.
• An emergency radio.
• A stash of cash in your home, at least a few hundred dollars.
• A couple gallons of gas in the trunk of your car.

Being prepared for emergencies lifts a burden off your shoulders you probably didn’t even realize was there. That’s what makes one of the most powerful ways to reduce stress.