 Hi guys, thank you so much for joining me. It is Sunday, it is Mother's Day. I hope whatever you're doing today that you're having a wonderful day and if you're a mom that you're celebrating it with your loved ones and if you're not a mom that you're still celebrating it with your loved ones and doing something fantastic for yourself. So the topic of the day for me, because I've been struggling with this, is how do you handle stress in your life? Especially when stress affects you on your skin care, with your skin care. How do you handle that? Oh my gosh. Anyways, if you're curious what I've been doing to try to de-stress, stay tuned. Thank you all so much for joining me. Jay and I are going to be going down to spend the day with my mom. One of my sons is going to be with us and my sister and her husband as well. So we're not going to have a huge crowd but we're bringing food and we're just going to be with mom today and we might. I'm not too sure because it is still pretty cold outside. We might end up taking our bikes with us and then after we have lunch, which will be probably around two o'clock, maybe going for a bike ride. We'll see. I don't know. Daylight savings time. It's really nice. It doesn't get dark until very, very late. So I'd like to maybe ride my e-bike around where I grew up, you know, because I grew up in this particular town where my mother lives. So anyways, I'm not going to really rehash all the reasons why I'm stressed. So those of you that have been with me for a while, you know why. And those of you that are new, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for subscribing. Please, you can go back and watch some of my previous videos and you'll kind of get a gist of what's going on in my life. But really super important thinking about managing stress, right? When when you get stressed, you kind of get thrown off your routine. You kind of like just lose yourself. And we all know right emotionally and intellectually I should say we all know that when you lose yourself, you're not going to be any good for anyone else. But it is so hard to balance that when you are stressed. I get it. So I've always been a creature of habit. I like the same products. I like the same routine. And then when life throws you all these curve balls, all of a sudden you really can't stay on that routine. And it's so hard once you fall off a routine to get back on a routine. So one of the biggest things that I know everyone always says when you're under stress is take that time for yourself. Find that time for yourself. Find yourself again and work on yourself because then you can be good for other people. And the first thing that happens to me when I get stressed and when life gets super busy is I fall off of my routine of exercising. Even if it's a simple walk. If it's a simple riding a bike or something like that, I fall off of that routine. And once you fall off once exercise goes by the wayside and you say bye bye to exercise, you open the door to comfort food and eating more. And then of course that becomes more weight gain. And the more weight you gain, the more harder it is to be mobile, the more the more you beat yourself up, the more you get down on yourself without a doubt. So it is so hard to keep that in mind, you know, to really think about exercise and food and working on yourself. When you're stretched so thin, which I was really thin, but when you're stretched, you know, where you're dealing with maybe a sick parent or you're dealing with your own health issues and then you have work stress and family stress just all compiling, it seems like you take the back seat. So for me, this last month, I've been trying super hard to focus back and getting back to a routine. And part of the routine is trying to get more physical. You know, I talk about having my spin bike downstairs, I've been trying to ride that, but I thought I would be able to ride it every day and I haven't. So I'm being more mindful of the food you put in, the food I put in my mouth anyway. So working super hard on trying to get back to a routine and the things that helped me with the exercise I've mentioned many times is my Apple Watch. I absolutely love my Apple Watch. I love the health benefits. There's so many different things that my Apple Watch. I have an Apple Watch six of what it does. It warns me. It asks me if I'm okay. It tells me I need to wash my hands longer when I'm washing my hands. It tells me, you know, my heart rate, my emotions, take deep breath, take deep breath. And for me, deep breathing, actually stopping and taking a deep breath, whether you have an Apple Watch telling you or not doesn't matter. But one of the biggest, biggest things for me for de-stressing has always been deep breathing. And so when I deep breathe, and I know it's, it may sound crazy when you're breathing, big deal. But when I feel super stressed and I just take deep breaths and I try to hold them, you know, whether it's 15 seconds, 20 seconds, whatever it is, I'm holding my breath and then I slowly exhale it. And I do that maybe three or four times. I can feel my body. I can feel the tension relieving and I can feel my body relaxing. So to me, that's super, super important that I remember to take those deep, deep breaths. But the second thing that falls by the wayside when I get super stressed is my skincare. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, you know, all of a sudden I realize, yes, I'm washing my face. I'm doing the basics, but I'm not doing the things that I normally would do. So my skincare, I love my Jade Roller. I have a Jade Roller. I've got several actually. I keep my Jade Rollers in the refrigerator. They feel super, super icy. So when I do my skincare and I do my Jade Roller and I really work on rolling my skin with this every day, it helps de-puff me. Even if I haven't slept, it helps de-puff me. I don't know if you guys have heard about ice rolling and that's where you can take an ice cube and granted it can burn your finger or freeze your finger. So you know, you should hold it with something, but you can actually take an ice cube and do the same thing. And it's probably a bit more intense than the Jade Roller. But I love my Jade Roller. So I've been doing that all the time. I also make sure that I still do my skincare mask and getting back to that. Gosh, there was probably a two month period where I didn't even mask. Everything fell by the wayside. You know, I had my ear surgery. I had all those other things happening. I didn't even mask and I am a mask hauling. So back to masking and then I massage it with my Jade Roller. Oh my gosh, it feels so good. So taking and developing that routine again, taking 10, 20 minutes a day to do something like this. Yeah, I usually want to do a mask. It's 20 minutes. I put my mask on. I take it off and all of the excess product I massage back into my face. I tend to mask at night, not in the morning because I don't have that additional time. So at night I'll take all my makeup off, wash, skincare, do all of that stuff, and I'll put a mask on. And then I will use the Jade Roller with the mask as well. And then when it's done, 20 minutes later, I massage it all into my skin. I let that dry. So one thing that also fell off was my retin A use, right? I was like experimenting with my eye. I was wondering if that was contributing to dry eye. So I kind of backed off of that. So getting back into that routine, knowing that right now, three times a week, I'm going to apply my retin A. I typically apply it after I've done everything else, my skincare at night, my retin A. And then I do a little bit of CBD oil on top of it, the CBD oil for me. And I know I've talked about CBD oil for a long time. The CBD oil really helps me with my retin A. And it can also help with peeling. I've been peeling a lot because I've been ramping up my retin A as well. So I've been doing more, a little bit exfoliation and all of that. But the CBD oil is, to me, hands down amazing. I have other products that I use that I really like. This one from Color Science, the All Calm. I used this in the morning. Now this was sent to me quite a while ago for a review. I think I mentioned it. But until my skin really got stressed badly, I didn't realize how nice this was for badly stressed skin, red blotches, just calming my skin down. So in the morning, I've been using this from Color Science and I really like it. It's expensive, though, but when they have a sale, it's not all that bad. So anyways, you know, I put the retin A on at night, I do a little bit of CBD, I do whatever. And then one of the last things that I do for myself is I use the Milk Magnesia. Mom, as it's called. And I shake it up really good and I put a tiny bit into the cap here and I'm going to bed and I just pat it all over. I actually look like I have a white mask of Milk Magnesia on my face. I pat it all over and then I try to avoid, you know, or I let it dry because I want to make sure I can put a frowning on before I go to bed because I realize that my 11s are really acting up because I frown so much in my sleep. So getting back, de-stressing my skin. And what I found is the more I've done that, the more I've worked on my routine again, the better I feel about myself. And the better I feel about myself, the more pep and more energy, the better everything looks around me, even if everything around me is not all that good at times. So yeah, absolutely trying to de-stress it. I use eye cream and sometimes I use my eye cream all over my face. I use my CBD and then I use my Milk Magnesia. I get up in the morning and typically now that I'm into this my routine again, I get up in the morning, my skin feels soft like a baby. I may have some flaking. I do some general exfoliation. I use the products that I do to wash, you know, to end washing my face and all of that and peach skin care. And I really, I really like that for the general, you know, foliation, exfoliation. And then if I have to, I put on the all calm basically, let all that soak in and then I use the sunblock. Yeah, so I put my sunblock on every day before I even stop my makeup. And that's the other thing, you know, the, I call it anti-aging. I know a lot of people this backlash on anti-aging or aging gracefully, whatever you want to call it, but doing and taking care of yourself makes me feel good. And like I said, when I feel good, I am going to be more help to my mom, maybe more help to people I work with and all of that. So sticking to that routine is so important. One of the other things that I have, and I just charged it and I, I, this is actually a sleep mask and it's Velcro. So it fits and it's got a blue tooth. So I'm going to take this out because you charge it. It's like a hidden little charge port inside. So I'm going to take it out and it's called a sleep mask and it's Enjoy Your Life. I don't remember. This is not expensive. It might have been twenty, twenty five dollars. I bought it and I bought it because I go to sleep at night, oftentimes with the, you know, with music playing or sometimes even an audio book. And sometimes I wake up and my earbuds are gone or whatever. So I bought this so that I could sleep with a mask and it would be dark and it would be comfortable and it's adjustable. And then I could listen to that music, the waves, the rain, whatever soothing music you need to help you fall asleep or an audio book. Yeah. So I'm really super enjoying that. Works for me for relaxation. So all of these different things, my sleep mask, taking care of my skin, getting back into my routine and hopefully getting back into some consistent routine of exercise. It's springtime almost. I know technically it isn't, but it is. The sun is shining even though the weather's colder up here. Getting outdoors, just getting outside is, is going to be huge for me. Even if it's not, even if I can't go for a long walk or a long bike ride, but getting outside and just breathing the fresh air and the sunshine. So I know the only way to handle and manage stress is going, I know it's going to be different for you than it is for me, but I know that for me that if I don't regroup, if I don't get back into my routine, if I don't consciously put myself in that routine, schedule me time, then I know the me time is going away. And when the me time goes away, exercise goes away with it, and what comes in instead was me overeating, me being lazy about my skin care about myself, and then my face, you know, all of a sudden I have my pores clogged. I know this because this is what's been happening to me. All of a sudden I'm having, you know, breakouts and it's because I felt off my routine and I let stress overtake my life. So purposeful, practicing deep breathing, purposeful, practicing routine setting and working on that routine is going to be so important. I'm 68. I can't go back and relive my life. I'm 68. I don't know if I have 10 years left. I don't know if I have one year left. I don't know if I have one day left. So I'm no good for anyone if I'm no good for myself and I know we all know that. So digging deep and taking care of you, putting you, making you number one is huge. So those are some of my stress handling tips, what I've been doing, what's been working for me, and it's not always works. I mean it doesn't always work. Sometimes I fall off obviously, but the point is picking yourself back up, pulling your pants up and getting back out there, you know, and doing your thing. So yeah. Anyways, I hope that you have a wonderful day. We, as I said, are going down to my mom's. I'll probably share pictures in my next video. She's doing, she's doing okay, which is, which is super good, but yeah, she has a ways to go. So thank you for your continued prayers and understanding and I love you all and you all have an amazing, amazing day. Bye-bye.