Have you ever just woken up and for some reason not quite felt yourself? You are for the most part a happy individual, an enjoyment to be around, and liked by others, but for some reason today - you’re not…
We can go on and on as to why, but most reasons can boil down to one word, stress. It can come from many different sources, work, family, health, but at the end of the day stress affects your mood and the mood of everyone around you.
So why do we succumb?
This morning I was feeling the pinch, it seems that there is so much to accomplish in such a short period of time and there’s no end in the distant future. So I feel stressed. Even during my exercise I was thinking about all the things I don’t have time to accomplish in the time allotted and had a less than productive workout.
So let’s examine what stress is for just a moment
“I Am So Stressed Out”
means I FEEL overwhelmed with life’s current circumstances and I’m not sure how I’m going to overcome them.
The solution:
Stress is a mental concept, so in order to tackle the problem, we must face the root cause.
Step 1: Have a stress buster conversation with yourself by asking some of the following questions
- What’s the worst that could happen? Will it be catastrophic? Will you survive?
Take a minute to answer the questions in your mind to determine how bad it actually is. More often than not, we create a much worse environment in our minds than actually exists.
- If overwhelmed ask - How do you eat an elephant…one bite at a time.
You only have a given number of hours and minutes each day to accomplish anything. Stress will wreak havoc on your planning skills and create more stress, it’s a vicious cycle. So write down everything you have to do and break it down into manageable tasks - even write in when you are going to take a break such that you can ‘chunk’ the activities into something palatable.
- If you have a favorite inspirational author, or speaker, have some quotes on hand or audio clips to bring you back into sanity.
This serves to undue what helped to wind you up into a spiral of stress. Thoughts have momentum, when you have a particular idea, it leads to a similar idea, then another, and another. So begin with something familiar, one that you know and like to snap you out of it. One of my favorites is:
“Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don’t want.”
That one has helped me stay out of worry frequently as I don’t want what I don’t want!
As I write this I already feel better about the 1001 tasks that are on my plate, I already feel that what I have to do is indeed accomplish-able and I am ready to tackle it all…one bite at a time.
