“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ” Freya Stark
What are core values? These are values that are important to you or the organization you work for. These are deep-seated values that you identify with as necessary components of you or you work. Some people value honesty, integrity, trust, intelligence, or a strong work ethic. No matter what they are if they are in alignment with who you are the more satisfied you’ll be. Your identity is wrapped up in your core values. It is what you believe in.
How well do you know your core values? I have found that looking at a list of over 300 values that most people find it difficult to winnow the list down to just a few values, just 3 or 4 values that are the most important to them. With too many values it is easy to get lose focus on what is really important and identify with values that are tangential to the real you.
Why is it important to have just a few values? You can certainly have many values that are important and without a focus on a few it leads to less intense focus on the values that are the most important. There are probably just three to five core values that you can develop with sufficient intensity to make substantial improvements on.
Identify your values
1. Take a look at a list of values and quickly choose 10 values that you identify with
2. Narrow the list of 10 values down to 5
3. Now choose the 3 values that you strongly identify with
What can you do to strengthen your values?
Take a look at Zappos values and how they apply those values in the work environment.
How are you living out your values?
If you are interested in finding your core values Taylor Protocols offers an assessment that will identify your strengths in four areas. The information is useful in finding the right career and how to resolve conflicts with others. When you know what values are being challenged in yourself you can develop strategies to reduce that conflict.
Take some time and get to know your core values today.
“To have a great purpose to work for, a purpose larger than ourselves, is one of the secrets of making life significant, for then the meaning and worth of the individual overflow his personal borders and survive his death.” Will Durant
Work … what is it? Why do you do it? Why do so many people hate the work they are doing?
1. Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.
So, why do so many people disengage in the work they are doing? What would allow you to engage in work in a way that you were able to produce positive results and enjoy it?
George Bernard Shaw the renowned poet opined that life has a special meaning and that is to say, “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.” Not that many people say that their life is filling a purpose never mind a mighty one.
As a coach I come across many people who are less than satisfied with the work they do. For some people their work has resulted in depression. The work is so unsatisfying that they can’t do their work. They feel trapped in doing work that is meaningless because of some benefit that their employer offers that they feel unsure that they can get somewhere else. Who am I to get a better job some think. Asked what their purpose statement is and most people can’t think of one and it is no wonder that they are stuck doing work that doesn’t agree with them. They don’t know how to align their purpose, their gifts, their strengths and their talents with the work they do.
When we are able to use our natural talents and are able to express those talents in the engagement of work we become more productive. When we know what we love to do and are able to do what we love we are happier. It seems to make sense yet close to 80% of people are doing work they don’t like. Perhaps it is possible to say that most work isn’t enjoyable and that something has to be done to make money (earning a living is still important) to live on.
Read what Jim Collins wrote about having the right people in the right job doing the work that they love to do.
Disciplined people: “Who” before “what”
“You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it’s your job to get it going. You have to decide where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and who’s going with you.
Most people assume that great bus drivers (read: business leaders) immediately start the journey by announcing to the people on the bus where they’re going—by setting a new direction or by articulating a fresh corporate vision.
In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances. Take David Maxwell’s bus ride. When he became CEO of Fannie Mae in 1981, the company was losing $1 million every business day, with $56 billion worth of mortgage loans underwater. The board desperately wanted to know what Maxwell was going to do to rescue the company.
Maxwell responded to the “what” question the same way that all good-to-great leaders do: He told them, That’s the wrong first question. To decide where to drive the bus before you have the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus, is absolutely the wrong approach.
Maxwell told his management team that there would only be seats on the bus for A-level people who were willing to put out A-plus effort. He interviewed every member of the team. He told them all the same thing: It was going to be a tough ride, a very demanding trip. If they didn’t want to go, fine; just say so. Now’s the time to get off the bus, he said. No questions asked, no recriminations. In all, 14 of 26 executives got off the bus. They were replaced by some of the best, smartest, and hardest-working executives in the world of finance.
With the right people on the bus, in the right seats, Maxwell then turned his full attention to the “what” question. He and his team took Fannie Mae from losing $1 million a day at the start of his tenure to earning $4 million a day at the end. Even after Maxwell left in 1991, his great team continued to drive the flywheel—turn upon turn—and Fannie Mae generated cumulative stock returns nearly eight times better than the general market from 1984 to 1999.
When it comes to getting started, good-to-great leaders understand three simple truths. First, if you begin with “who,” you can more easily adapt to a fast-changing world. If people get on your bus because of where they think it’s going, you’ll be in trouble when you get 10 miles down the road and discover that you need to change direction because the world has changed. But if people board the bus principally because of all the other great people on the bus, you’ll be much faster and smarter in responding to changing conditions. Second, if you have the right people on your bus, you don’t need to worry about motivating them. The right people are self-motivated: Nothing beats being part of a team that is expected to produce great results. And third, if you have the wrong people on the bus, nothing else matters. You may be headed in the right direction, but you still won’t achieve greatness. Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.”
There is a company that know how to get the right people in the right seats on the bus. Taylor Protocols can do the type of individual analysis to see if the seats on the bus have the right people on it. It makes sense to have the right people engaged in the work they do. Imagine what would be possible if everyone was able to be engaged in their work. It is currently estimated that organizational output is only at 33% and that means hiring more people to get work done that could be done with fewer people if they were fully engaged in their work.
Shawn Achor has been doing research on happiness, and positive psychology and asking some great questions and getting real answers. Happy people perform better on the job and in the job.
Take a few minutes and listen to the arguments Shawn puts forth.
Now, what are you going to do? Are you going to continue to work at things you don’t enjoy? Are you going to stay stuck in a job that you wish would go away?
Take a few steps and identify what would be better for you.
1. Define your purpose
2. Define your strengths
3. Define your natural talents
4. Create a plan so that your work or your new work, works for you.
William Dubois put down his thoughts like this, “The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work bring you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this – with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need – this life is hell.”
What do you want to do? Work in heaven or work in hell. Most people have chosen to work in hell. Where do you want to work?
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”
Corrie ten Boom
What does worry cost you? When you worry you lose your power, you give it up, and it takes the joy out of today. Think of worry as a thief, a thief that only robs you of your energy. What are you worrying about right now?
One way to shift your mind from worrying about what might go wrong to thinking about what will go right. If worry stops you in your tracks and shifts your thinking to “I can’t do _______________”, what would happen if you changed that to “I can do _______________”, instead?
Our society dwells on what can go wrong most of the time. Think about the news you are listening to. What was positive and uplifting in what you heard or watched?
We tend to use words like “don’t”, “watch out for”, “can’t” or some other negative view. What would happen if you created sentences and thoughts that were powerfully supportive? Think about what you can make happen. Think about what you can do. Think about what it will be like when you succeed. Focus on the outcome you desire rather than the one you don’t want.
Take a look at Corrie’s quote about worry. What does she say about worry, “it robs today of its strength”? Here are some thing you can do.
1. Acknowledge the issue you face. Say it out loud, “The problem is ___________”.
2. What can be done to solve the problem? List out all the ideas you have.
3. What one idea is something you can start today?
4. Focus on what you can do. Focus on the result you want.
If you don’t know what you can do then create a mindmap and explore some ways to work out the worries. Think about solutions to the problem and the positive outcome rather than what negative things could happen.
“How we perceive a situation and how we react to it is the basis of our stress. If you focus on the negative in any situation, you can expect high stress levels. However, if you try and see the good in the situation, your stress levels will greatly diminish.” Catherine Pulsifer
It’s a job, it’s barely a job and every morning getting the foot on the floor is more and more difficult. It’s a life, it’s barely a life and every day it seems that the bills grow larger and larger. It’s a relationship, it’s barely a relationship with more and more time spent in arguing about each other’s faults and failures. It’s a diet, it’s barely a diet that works, that is helpful in losing weight. It’s motivation, it barely the motivation that is needed to improve all the things that are going wrong in life.
There are many people looking for some sort of relief, a way to get through the day, to get through the moment and to feel like there is some purpose and meaning in life. For many people it is a struggle to stay focused and get something done, there is no relief in their life, just the constant struggle to make it through the day.
What if there was a way to get relief but a way to get more out of life so that everyday is purpose filled and engaging? What would it be like to feel alive everyday? What would it be like?
In many cases it is the way we think about life that makes it a struggle. The difference between an optimistic look at life and a pessimistic look at life is the difference between happiness and despair. Relief comes when we start looking at life in a new way.
2. Resilience. People who are able to bounce back from unfortunate circumstances get relief faster. Increasing positive to negative thoughts ratio increases resilience.
3. Mindfulness. Focus on creating positive thoughts that break the cycle of negative thinking.
When we shift our mental picture of what is happening to us at any given time from negative to positive we enjoy greater relief. Moving from worry to opportunity creates a sense of excitement and wonder in our lives. Ingesting positive thoughts improves our mood and ability to bounce back from bad things in our life.
Where do you need relief? What can you do today to generate positive thoughts? What do you really want to be different in your life?
Relief is available to you when you meditate, bounce back and are mindful of what can be done rather than focusing on what has happened. Relieve your mind of the burden of negative thinking and you will experience relief.
“And he, the said Wirz, still wickedly pursuing his evil purpose, did establish and cause to be designated within the prison enclosure containing said prisoners a “dead line,” being a line around the inner face of the stockade or wall enclosing said prison and about twenty feet distant from and within said stockade; and so established said dead line, which was in many places an imaginary line, in many other places marked by insecure and shifting strips of [boards nailed] upon the tops of small and insecure stakes or posts, he, the said Wirz, instructed the prison guard stationed around the top of said stockade to fire upon and kill any of the prisoners aforesaid who might touch, fall upon, pass over or under [or] across the said “dead line” ….” ["Trial of Henry Wirz," Report of the Secretary of War, Oct. 31, 1865]
A prisoner tries to escape and crosses the “dead line” and the guards have cause to shoot the prisoner. Crossing the deadline meant certain death. Newspapers picked up on that term and used it to define a moment in time where what was ready to print was put into print.
Today a deadline is used to mean it must be done by this time. The deadline to get this or that done often passes by nearly unnoticed in some domains. A deadline merely marks the desire for something to be completed. What deadlines have you watched go by?
In the civil war the prisoner’s didn’t have the luxury of watching a deadline go past, they knew that a deadline meant a certain finality. At one time a deadline was enforced, now it is a term that doesn’t carry the weight or final conclusion that it once did. You’ve reached the deadline and find that you are unable to cross it.
A deadline demarks the boundary around a prison, an imaginary line which could not be crossed. In today’s world people feel like they are living in a prison where crossing the boundary does mean a type of death. People are enclosed within the deadline by fear, the fear of failure, the fear of change, the fear of not being good enough, or the fear of success. To cross the deadline means something will have changed and that fear prevents them from crossing the deadline.
The deadline now lives in our imagination rather than being an imaginary boundary around a prison. Our boundary line which we have declared holds us back from being the kind of person we could really be. What is your deadline? How close is it to your prison walls? What would happen if you crossed that deadline?
The prison that you are the prisoner of could be a prison of debt, the prison of doubt, the prison of fear, the prison of worry, the prison of work, the prison of a relationship, the prison of time, the prison of anger, or the prison of stress. Whatever your prison is named it is hard to escape from it.
What prison do you find yourself in? What are you doing to cross the deadline?
” The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain
The doorway to success
What is the secret to success? It is doing three simple things. By doing these things you have more vitality during the day. You’ll feel alive and be able to think clearly. You’ll be able to feel the air pulse through the body. You’ll be able to focus and stay alert. You’ll feel happier and more grateful.
So, what are the big three.
1. Exercise – as simple as it may seem exercise increases the production of dopamine and serotonin in the body. These hormones increase the sense of well-being and can improve focus and alertness especially for those with ADHD/ADD. Exercise is something most people lack. In today’s fast paced world most of the work is done sitting down with little physical activity. Taking breaks to energize the body by increasing the respiratory rate and heart rate is a good practice. Better physical conditioning helps improve immune function. Exercise is a win-win proposition, a win for the mind and a win for the body. What is stopping you?
2. The second big secret and it appears to be a secret because it isn’t done nearly enough and that is eating a balanced diet and drinking the right amount of water. Drinking water, it’s cheap and available yet we spend a lot of money purchasing other drink alternatives. Save money and drink more water.
Diet in America is poor. Obesity rates are climbing quickly and all states exhibit obesity rates of 20% or more. The availability of cheap high calorie food might be to blame but so is the fast paced society we live in where preparing healthy meals has given way to meals that can be prepared in a few minutes or seconds.
Health issues increase dramatically as the weight increases. There is a greater risk of diabetes, a disease that can be controlled by diet and exercise and yet as a society more and more people are becoming diabetic.
The secret, eat less and eat better. Drink more water stay hydrated. Headaches are often a result of not drinking enough water.
3. The final secret even though there are hundreds of studies on this topic is getting enough sleep each day (7-8 hours). High performers get the sleep they need to continue to perform well. It is possible to get results on a few hours a sleep a night for a short period of time but for the long-term, the right amount of sleep is critical.
The formula for success is living an active healthy lifestyle. If the body isn’t healthy the mind isn’t as healthy as it should be either. Living a lifestyle of positive choices improves longevity, improves overall well-being and reduces the chances of having expensive medical care. You would think those would be great things to have but many people are making choices that push the responsibility of their health to the medical field. Why?
What are you doing to live a positive healthy lifestyle?
“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour?s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What do you think is your normal operating zone? By zones I mean “victim zone”, “excuse zone”, “performance zone” and “high performance zone” where you spend most of your time.
What zone do your thoughts and actions reside in most of the time?
With stress increasing daily and more and more jobs being lost in an anemic economy many people (over 10%) have lost hope, at least the hope that they would fit into a job that would pay the bills and offer some type of security. When hope is lost the focus is in making excuses about “why” they are in the position they are in. As time passes the feeling moves from excuses to being a victim. The victim mindset is characterized by withdrawal and giving up. At times the victim will lash out in anger with that anger being directed externally (it is someone’s fault) and with a strong need for sympathy.
What we need today is fewer victim’s and excuse makers and more performers. Shifting the mindset from victim to owner (performer) takes work and a lot of work. It takes recognizing that there are opportunities and it takes a desire to step towards opportunity rather falling into the pit of despair.
John Milton wrote, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” What we feed our minds we soon become. If we feed our minds and endless stream of excuses that is what we become. If we don’t believe we are good enough we will shortly become that as well. If we rise to the level of our thoughts then when are thoughts are decidedly negative our results will be as well.
We choose our thoughts as we choose our performance. Even though our circumstances may be challenging or very challenging we have a choice to make about out thoughts. Are our thoughts going to meet the challenge or be beat back by the challenge?
Maybe you know someone who has given up and fallen into the mode of being a victim. You might know someone with similar circumstances finding opportunity and taking action. The difference between a performer and a victim are the thoughts rather than the circumstances.
Take a look at Louis Zamperini’s life and see how he was able to overcome physical and mental abuse by keeping a positive attitude, a high performance attitude.
‘Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.” Pope John XXIII
More and more people are overwhelmed by all the things they have to do. There is a list and another list and lists that have long been buried. Lists upon lists of things to do and they all seem important and necessary to do. It creates a sense of overwhelm and lower energy to do the work. How do you move beyond the feeling of being overwhelmed?
The first step is to define and list all the things that are important to you, things you value and list them in the order of importance to you. What is the most important thing? Is it money, relationships, career, spirituality, family, health, personal development or something else? Do you know what you value, what you place first in your life? What are you placing first in your life?
If you value relationships and spend very little time growing those relationships there will always be a tug towards the values you hold and over time that tug will grow into more than just a tug. When you are living in a way that doesn’t align with your values it is easy to get overwhelmed, frustrated and upset.
What steps can you take to overcome the frustration of being overwhelmed?
1. Write down all the things that are you feel need to be done. All of them, small or large.
2. How important are those things? Do they need attention immediately, in a day or two, or longer (a week or a month).
3. Rewrite the list and put those things in the categorized of immediate, soon, and later.
4. Estimate how long it will take to do the “immediate” tasks. Minutes, hours, or days.
5. Which one is the most important of the immediate tasks to complete now.
6. Do it and get it done.
7. Now, how much time do you have left today to complete those “immediate things”? Will you be able to complete these tasks?
8. What can be re-negotiated? What can you do last?
9. Take a break … 10 minutes, refocus, re-energize, take in some deep breaths. Relax
10. Start on the next most important task.
Now 10 steps may seem like a lot of tasks to do to just whittle down the immediate list to something that is manageable and that is because it allows you to focus on what is the most important right now. Work on lowering the stress by getting things done. Little things create a win and may give you the energy to tackle a bigger item. Keep moving forward through the list. If you get all the immediate tasks done, work on something that is coming up. Prioritize that list and do what you can. Keep removing things off of the list.
It may take some time to shrink the list down but applying effort each day, doing what you can will help reduce that feeling of overwhelm.
If you can’t get it all done yourself, see who you can find that can help you. Is there a friend that could spend a couple of yours shrinking your list. Is there an employee that could take a few of the tasks. Distribute the workload if it is more than what you can do alone.
If the work was given to you by someone else see if you can reschedule some of the work. Get some help so that you don’t get too far behind.
“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” Henry David Thoreau
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. ” Henry David Thoreau
I was working with a person who described his life as a constant state of being overwhelmed. There was work to be done a long list of things that could be, should be done and yet the action needed to make that list go down wasn’t happening, it was overwhelming. Have you experienced a sense of being overwhelmed at some point in your life or is it a daily occurrence?
The sense of being overwhelmed is a characteristic of those who have ADHD/ADD symptoms. Lists become too large, the disorganization too much and finally the feelings of being overwhelmed take over and stop progress. When an ADHD person reaches their tolerance for getting the list done activity halts (the brain can’t focus on just one thing but shifts around and around and around the many things that have to be done and nothing gets done) as the mind tries to make sense of the things that need to get done. It becomes a frustrating and upsetting process to know that there are things to be done and all you see are the things that aren’t getting done. For some people that constant inability to get things done leads to depression or withdrawal. People in work situations people with ADHD experience the stress of meetings, deadlines, and the list of things that should have been done yesterday and can become overwhelmed.
One way to create balance and focus in each day is to break down the list of things that “need” to be done into three categories. Get a sheet of paper and create 5 columns, one for date, a done column and a minimum, acceptable and ideal column.
- Minimum column: What is the minimum that needs to be done today. These are high priority items that need to get done today. If you get these things done today you will have had a “good” day. This is the minimum to get done.
- Acceptable column: If things are going good and you get the things done on the minimum column the items in this column are ways to improve the outcome for the day. It would be great to get these things done and getting these done would allow you to feel successful in terms of accomplishments.
- Ideal column: This column would contain items that you would really like to get done and it would take a day where things just clicked and the mind stayed focused and interruptions were minimal. If you accomplished this amount of work you would have an “outstanding day”. If you don’t get these things done it doesn’t mean the day was bad or not a good day, this is what could get done if your day was ideal.
Each day separate the items into the three columns “Minimum”, “Acceptable” and “Ideal”. If you are successful in getting the work done in any of the columns create some reward mechanism that you will give a sense of accomplishment (healthy snack, a short break, 5 minutes of meditation). Yes, celebrate success. Getting things done is great, and rewarding that effort is an important part of the process as well. Perfectionists would tend to think that the only way to get through the day would be to get all the items on all three lists done and if they didn’t they would believe they didn’t have enough on the list (is that true, perfectionists?).
AIM to make each day ideal but be happy to get the minimum done.
Each day produce this chart and before you start the day define what has to get done vs. what would make an ideal day in terms of output. Make the lists realistic. Estimate the amount of time it will take to do the tasks and then prioritize the tasks in terms of energy required to complete the task. If the task is something you don’t want to do, get that done first. Get the hard things out of the way. Why? Most people have more energy early in the day and have more time to focus. Find a period of time that you can focus 100% of your effort on getting the work done, preferably when there are no distractions. Create a new list each day don’t just pull from the previous day’s list unless it is necessary for those things to get done.
If you happen to have ADHD, getting your day organized is usually one of the biggest challenges. If you just charge off into the day and “do” things you may be doing things that aren’t important. If you just sit there and look at how much has to get done and get overwhelmed then that isn’t going to help you be successful either. For ADHD people an organized assault on each day is necessary. It takes practice and diligence (a difficult commodity to find in the ADHD world) to get through each day.
Now, the list has to be somewhere where it is in your face. It can’t be in a pile or under a pile to be useful. If you are a computer user (and many people are) get that list right in front of you. If you aren’t doing the kind of work that is 80% computing work, get a while board and organize it with the columns that are shown in the picture above. Each day write down the what needs to get done. Make sure the whiteboard is in a place you can see and use easily – make it front in center. If it is in your office make it your task board and don’t cover it over with other materials. Make it your focal point. For children with ADHD, a white board may be useful (unless it turns into an art project) if it is in a place where it can be seen and has all the tasks they need to do for the day.
Making it routine. The hard part for ADHD people is getting lists, or task boards to be part of their regular daily routine. It has to be “fun” in some way and it has to turn into a habit just like many other daily routines.
Start today – start making the big list into smaller bite sized lists and start celebrating success and feeling better about who you are.
“There are times when we each have only enough strength to complete those assignments that we are fully convinced are important.”Goethe
“It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.” Wayne Dyer
Are you stressed out? How do you know?
It wasn’t long ago I was talking to a young adult who was facing criminal charges for domestic violence. He was stressed out. His day started in the early morning and didn’t really end when classes let out at 10:00pm. When he got home he faced an angry wife who would hand him his young child. Already exhausted from a long hard day, his next job was to care for his child. His life frayed and eventually it broke, the stress was too much. He lost his job, his family was falling apart and he was clearly struggling to figure out what to do next.
Stress, not dealt with can result in anger, sadness, grief, or withdrawal. When unmitigated stress results in anger or violence then it becomes serious and the issue of stress really needs to be addressed.
What do you do when you notice that the stress is taking over your life?
In another situation it was work. It was the kind of work that required a high attention to detail and providing an accurate assessment of the findings. The result of making a mistake could result in life serious life change for the client. Long hours, exacting detail and a mistake could mean the loss of the career, a career that paid very well and required years of training. The stress started gnawing away at life for this person, less exercise, poor diet and a desire to just “get away”. The family situation started to decay and anger and frustration was becoming the normal pattern of life. Was there a way to lower the stress?
When do you start to evaluate what stress is doing in your life? Often people wait until things reach the breaking point before taking action, or creating the healthy habits that help manage stress. What do you do?
Imagine walking out on your family after years of watching your wife abuse prescription drugs. Walking out without a job, a place to sleep or a car and with some serious dietary problems. Again, stress reaches deep and causes people to react in ways that don’t seem to make sense. The stress builds and builds and with one more stressful event a person snaps. They react in anger and make choices that make life even more difficult than they were before.
It would be great to say that these people got their lives under control and that they were dealing with less stress rather than more. For the first person the criminal justice system may decide that jail time would be best for this young man and from there his life could get worse. The second person is slipping away from anger into withdrawal, the pain and stress of both work and family life and other situations are robbing him of his ability to lower his total stress. The last person, found a car and was looking for work, and maybe slowly he will rebuild his life.
If the stress had been dealt with earlier perhaps the story would have changed. In all cases if the family support structure was stronger the levels of stress each of these people experienced could have been lowered.
Steps to manage stress
1. Take inventory of stress in your life. List all the things you are aware that are stressing you. Then rate each item from 1-10, 1 = Low, 10 = high. Look at items with stress levels of 1 – 3 and see if those can be eliminated. The big stresses take a lot of work, so work on the little ones and get rid of them.
2. Decide what you will start saying “No” to. It is easy to add into life more activity and more things to do and that just adds to the stress burden. If you are trying to take steps for a better future and it includes managing a family, going to school and working full-time make sure you have the support you need from family , friends and employers to properly manage the stress.
3. Eat right, get enough sleep and exercise. Often people who are living lives that include a lot of stress give up sleep, starting eating junk food and not getting any exercise. The things that matter to the body, sleep, exercise and diet are the first things that are taken out of the daily routine.
4. Get help. Get help early so that new habits can be created to deal with stress. It may be help from a professional, a coach or gaining commitment and support from friends and family.
5. Think about today, be present. A lot of stress is created when there is worry about the future. Do what you can do today, just today, and work on that. Worrying about the future produces no useful results now.
Stress, what is it costing you?
Are you working in a high stress environment? Are you struggling with family issues? Are you cramming more into your life than you can actually commit to? Are you getting angry more often? Are small things suddenly big things?
What is stress costing you? What price will you be paying by not dealing with the stress in your life?
If you desire to take proactive steps in managing stress working with a life coach would be another option.
Take time out, time to relax, to get away from the daily grind. Find some time to be at peace with yourself. Take time to smell the flowers.
“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”
G.K. Chesterton
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ” Freya Stark
