As a CEO of a start-up my days are like roller-coaster rides. And sometimes when I get home from work I'm a total stress mess. My brain is buzzing, I’m in a bad mood, and no amount of self-pep-talking is working. I really hate when I feel this way but it happens.
I also feel guilty when my stress spills over to my 10 year-old daughter — which it invariably does. So a few months ago when I came home at the end of one of these super-stressful days I told her that we were going to start a new tradition:
When I feel insanely stressed we’re going to go and do something really fun and maybe a little crazy.
At first my daughter looked at me a bit suspiciously -- until she realized this could actually work in her favor. That night the fun and somewhat crazy thing was to go out to eat on a school night, which we never do. It was the two of us (my husband was working late), we sat at the bar at our local fave, and it felt like being out with a friend. Total success.
On another day when it took me over an hour to drive 7 miles home from work (it was pouring rain, I was late, after a very rough day at work), our “do something fun and crazy when stressed” tradition was this: making crazy omelets. Really really crazy omelets: One side with veggies and cheese, and the other side with sprinkles and chocolate chips. Yes, chocolate chips.
I’m not sure if it was more fun to make this, eat it, or share it on Happier (where some of our users seriously questioned my taste:), but we had a blast. And when I was putting her to bed that night, my daughter paid me one of my favorite compliments:
“You know mama, you’re kind of really cool. Because I don’t think many moms do crazy fun things when they are stressed. So yeah, you’re cool.”
I’ll take that 100 times over, with chocolate sprinkles on top.
(For more ways to reduce stress, check out my favorite ways to deal with a really bad day.)
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