I begin with a confession: when my life feels out of control, I clean something! Yes. A messy drawer, an unruly closet, under my son’s bed — anything that needs sprucing up becomes therapy for me when I am overly stressed! That’s all well and good until everything is clean and I still feel cluttered on the inside!

Even if you aren’t a “cleaner” when you get stressed, you do something to reduce stress and feel more control — you may be an eater or a shopper or a procrastinator or a crier or an exerciser or… well, we all have our ways of managing when life gets crazy.

But recently, I found myself out of drawers to organize and closets to clean! I was still feeling like stress was bigger than me and had more control than I wanted it to, so I decided to clean out my inbox!
When I did, you know what I found? I found lots of subscriptions that were cluttering up my inbox! Subscriptions I didn’t need, emails I didn’t read and offers and requests I didn’t remember ever asking for!

So, I went through each one and clicked, “I would like to unsubscribe!”

“I would like to unsubscribe!”

“I would like to unsubscribe!”

“I would like to unsubscribe!”

Girl, it felt sooooo good!

With every click, I felt a little more in control of my life! I felt empowered and in control and free!

Then I leaned back in my office chair and thought, “maybe I wouldn’t have this cleaning stress response if I clicked ‘unsubscribe’ in some other areas of my life?” Maybe I would like to unsubscribe from some of the things that clutter my life that I didn’t really ask for or choose? Maybe they just showed up in the inbox of my life and I kept them there and they need to go?”

So, I am asking myself the following questions to determine what I may need to unsubscribe from:

Do I say “yes” more than I say “no?”

What can I say “no” to?

Am I meeting my basic needs for rest, exercise and good eating habits?  If not, why?

Am I the only need-meeter in my world?  (Of course not! So, what am I doing that someone else could or should?)

What good things do I do that are bad investments of my time?

Does every request I get demand my immediate response?

What would happen if I answer most requests with, “I’ll get back to you?”

Are there some important things in my life that I treat as urgent even though they’re not?

Here’s the flat-out honest truth… I just can’t do all I used to do. In other words, I just can’t “subscribe” to as many things all at once as I used to. My inbox is a little smaller these days! I don’t have the same capacity I used to have.

Though my capacity is less, my demands have stayed the same. No wonder I have the cleanest drawers in the civilized world! As I  do some inventory and “unsubscribe” to some non-essential things in my life, I have more room to do what I can do and do it better and with greater satisfaction and less stress.

Stress is not our enemy.  It’s simply a trigger that prompts us to consider if we are doing too much or not doing it wisely enough.

Oh sister, I don’t know if I am the only one, but I feel like I live something like this and end up writing something like this every few years! I wonder why I have to review and redo? I wonder how and why the clutter builds up? Maybe it’s because we change, life changes, demands change. There is absolutely no room for shame or regret in my inbox, so, once again, I will adjust my recent demands to my latest abilities and move on with joy! If you need to, I hope you will too!If you are feeling high stress and low satisfaction, check the inbox of your life.

There’s a new year coming and we don’t want to drag old patterns into it if they’re not working!

Girls, let’s  keep learning  how to run our lives so our lives won’t run us ragged!

What are some things you may need to “unsubscribe” from? Share with us in the comments below.