Stress Relief

Let's face it: Time has a lot to do with stress. Does it ever seem to put the squeeze on our daily activities, whether work, recreation or even sleep? When we feel we need more time, we don't seem to have it. We can't change time but we can change ourselves. So, how can you become more mindful of how you use time? Many people struggle with making all their activities fit into a 12- or 18-hour timeframe. I've met professionals who say they would be so much happier if there were just 5 to 10 extra hours per day, so they could finish everything they have to do. Don't we all want more time? I particularly can identify with these sentiments because there was a time that I suffered from poor time management. I was working for a real estate company then and always felt overwhelmed by a sense of urgency. I felt like I was always behind. It seemed like I was working more and more each day yet falling behind on my tasks. Finally, I had enough of missed deadlines accompanied by the weight of worry and endless stress, all brought on by my lack of time management. So, I sat down and devised ways that I could fit everything into my actual schedule. It really is fun to organize your world this way. I'm going to share these Time Management Tips with you right now.

Five Tips to Demystify Stress Management Time Tip

#1: Assess Your Current Management Skills

How can you begin remedying your use of time? As with your relaxation practice, the best way to benefit personally from time management is to begin with a self-assessment. Make it honest and personal, and the Time Management Tips will be effective for you. So, your first step in fixing or improving your handle of time is to make a full assessment of your activities each day. Make an activity log, listing everything that you do from the moment that you wake up, and note the amount of time you spend on each activity. Be sure to include even the small activities, such as checking your email or eating breakfast. Also note what else you're doing while performing certain activities and what you feel at that time. Continue to make your full assessment for a whole week before sitting down to review what you have written. When seven days are up, read the activity log that you created and note how much actual time you spent on important activities and how much time you spent on non-essential activities. You might like to color-code these with highlighters: important in blue, non-essential in yellow. Aha! The truth revealed. Were you spending sufficient time on urgent obligations and important activities? Perhaps not but remember, the more honest you are, the more effective your time management techniques will be. How much time were you hanging out or doing mundane things when you were supposed to be working on something else? (In my personal assessment, I discovered much time consumed in pondering what I had to do when I could have used that time just doing and completing those tasks.) Mark the activities you think deserve less time and set a fixed time for each. For example, if it takes you more than 1 hour each morning to read and respond to your emails, try to halve that time. One professional tells me she no longer spends time cleaning her email because she says, "Life is too short." If you spend about 40 minutes just walking around the house or office instead of doing your chores and tasks, reduce that rest time to 15 minutes. Continue reducing the time spent on non-essential activities and create a new schedule based on your modifications. With self-awareness of your use of time, time does not seem to escape you and you are less likely to feel the need for more hours every day. Now you are on your way to controlling your use of time, a major component in clearing stress issues.

Time Tip #2: Maximize Productivity Time at Work

How can you be more productive in the office? If you maximize your time at the office, you don't have to bring work home. Make a commitment to spend 95% of your office hours on work alone, with only a small fraction of rest time just to keep your mind fresh. Avoid time stagnation or pauses from work for prolonged periods. Otherwise, you will surely feel frustrated after as you fall behind in your work. By finishing everything that needs to be done in a timely manner, you can be sure to leave the workplace with a greater sense of ease and accomplishment. You will have a more positive self-image and be gratified to know you have sufficient time for rest and relaxation. So, make this slogan a habit: Leave the Office at the Office. This applies to your workplace whether it is outside or inside your home. By not "bringing home" your work persona, you will enjoy family or friend interactions that are more congenial.

Time Tip #3: Plan Your Day Before You Start Your Day

Why should you write a plan for the day? Planning your day can help eliminate distractions and help you focus on the most important and urgent obligations. If you happen to suffer from chronic forgetfulness, then creating a day schedule is just what the doctor ordered. To make your day plan more effective, be sure to put high priority items at the very top and include important details. This will ensure you do not forget to accomplish chores or tasks that require your utmost attention. I have found the best time to plan the day's activities is at the end of the previous workday. As you review your present day accomplishments, you are best situated to plan your next day tasks. A mental snapshot of what you have done and what you need to do helps eliminate fragmented thinking and undue stress. You will rest and sleep better, approach the next day with a sense of purpose, and begin working right from the start. It also adds a dose of enthusiasm! Always know the answers to these questions:

• What am I going to do next?
• What is my target time for completing it? Be realistic. No sense causing undue stress over impossible deadlines. With a day plan, you are motivating and rewarding yourself with accomplishments throughout the day, thereby providing an antidote to stress.

Time Tip #4: Assert Your Right to Work

Why should you be more assertive at work? If you don't have five minutes to spare, don't be afraid to inform people that you need to finish something and cannot talk at this time. You must be assertive about this so people will be more respectful of your time and schedule. If you allow everyone to call or disturb you, you will only become frustrated about all the unfinished work. Often people are just looking for a receptive ear to vent their own problems. Unless something is urgent, emphasize that you have a schedule to follow and must avoid the consequences of falling behind. Standing up for your needs is an important step toward averting external stress and the build-up of internal stress. Time Tip #5: Don't Procrastinate How harmful is procrastination? A wise person told me "procrastination is the modern person's balm for stressful work situations." Procrastination may provide a temporary reprieve from stress. However, the payback is double: Too little time to complete your tasks plus the feeling of guilt or frustration that you didn't start sooner. It has happened to almost all of us. Have you ever "been there"? When you find yourself procrastinating, try this: Sit down and think about why you don't want to start the task-at-hand. Remember, the greatest self-improvement gains begin when you personalize the assessment. Be honest with yourself, so you can identify the problem. Then find a workable solution. For example, if you feel overwhelmed at a certain task, try to chunk it down into smaller tasks. Then reward yourself mentally with each step toward completion. Or, find someone who can help you. Even if you're exhausted, do not procrastinate indefinitely. Relax and start on the task as soon as you have recovered from fatigue. There should always be a plan of action in place to motivate you and ensure you do not waste your time on non-essential or unproductive pursuits. Start organizing your daily activities with these five Time Tips and you will be able to say with confidence: "Time used to control me. Now I control my time."

Source Chapter 4 Stress and Your Mind

The Rabbit Hole of Negativity

We all know that descending happens faster than ascending. Thanks to the principle of gravity, it's easier and faster to fall than to climb. Did You Know? Once you fall into negative thinking, you are more prone to spiral down deeper and deeperinto a proverbial rabbit hole of negativity a very stressful place. Just like the force of gravity, falling continues until counteracted by an opposing force. It's as if negativity spins all around and you perceive events through negative waves of thought. Did You Know? Negative thinking is one of the leading causes of stress, both at the workplace and at home. What's more, our society regularly reinforces patterns of negative thinking with "breaking news" about seemingly hopeless problems. So, conquering menacing thought patterns is indeed a challenge. We can envision these wrong turns in the direction of a person's thinking as falling into a rabbit hole because, once you get into this pattern, it becomes a habit of negative thinking. This is part of the habit of stress. Let's say, your boss compliments you profusely on your capabilities and adds one tiny suggestion for improvement. Later you mentally replay the evaluation but your focus is drawn entirely to that small request. Negative things tend to stick, unless we use our mind to restore balance. Remember gravity: falling is effortless; climbing takes a little effort. The negative thinking begets more negative thinking and soon it becomes a bad habit -- the glass always seems half empty. Things rarely or never seem to be right. Your focus is always on "problems". It can be difficult to make your way out of the rabbit hole because negative thinking drains your energy. The habit causes endless worry about things you can either solve or just ignore for the sake managing your stress level. Can you see how viewing external events through a negative lens triggers internal stress? How can you conquer negative thinking? The good news: Remember we observed that stress is a habit? Well, negative thinking is a habit and it stimulates the stress habit. But, you recall, a habit is something you can control by choice. We are not always able to control external stressors. However, we each possess this special power within: the ability to control how we react and respond to stressful situations. This is the way we avert internal stress. It is very possible, and very important, to change the way you think about situations and circumstances: Try always to look first at the positive aspects of the situation; then consider the negative. Remind yourself of this cartoon: Even make a copy and place it where you can always see it. This will help you adjust to a less stressful way of thinking. It will be easier to solve matters that you can control. And you will avoid falling into the trap of stressing over minor issues. Being mindful of how you think and respond to different situations opens the way to modifying your psychological stress profile for the better. This in turn impacts the frequency and intensity of your physiological stress response. What are common negative thinking habits? Habits die hard. That's why they are habits. But habits are reversible. If you want to relieve yourself of mindless worrying, anxiety and anger, then you must make it a habit to avoid the bad habits. Here are the most common negative thinking habits.

The Five Most Common Negative Thinking Habits

Negative Habit #1: Magnifying Small Inconveniences

I often see this pattern in professionals who seem to be allergic to every little inconvenience in life. Examples of these nuisances are encountering a computer glitch (who hasn't?) or running out of toner while printing. Or having to wait a few minutes for an elevator or parking space. Being put on hold by an operator, dropping a pen somewhere and not being able to find it, missing a game on TV, and similar minor occurrences that are natural vagaries of everyday life. When a person irrationally magnifies the scope and importance of a hassle or inconvenience, he automatically opens himself up to severe levels of stress. The solution to this destructive thinking pattern is easy

• :#1: Ask yourself. "Is this really that urgent or important? Is it worth the toll it takes on my health?"
• #2: If the answer is no, then accept that it's just a minor problem and you don't have to be stressed anymore.
• #3: Replace it with a more pleasant thought or even a little chuckle. And move on.

Negative Habit #2: Exaggerating Negative Situations

When a person says I can't stand _____________, that person's stress level is probably shooting up like a geyser. This thought pattern is another form of distortion or magnification in which a person overemphasizes the negative aspects of a situation for the sake of being angry or frustrated. A friend was preparing dinner and uttered with extreme disdain, "I hate rubber scrapers that aren't one-piece!" I remarked, "How can anyone hate a rubber scraper? Isn't that a rather strong word?" We both had a big laugh. Laughter is a great stress reliever. Impatient behavior is actually rooted in a person's beliefs or values. For example, if you are used to working in a fast-paced environment, you may feel continually frustrated in situations where you have to wait or stand in line. Sure, standing in line is not fun at all. But should you let it trigger your stress response? When you feel yourself reacting to passing inconveniences, do a quick self-evaluation:

#1 - Do I really find the situation intolerable or do I simply dislike what I'm experiencing at this moment?

#2 - Is my response to the situation an overreaction? If so, what has my behavior contributed to the situation -- something positive or useful? Negative Habit

#3: The Doomsday Effect

The Doomsday Effect is a hybrid of fantasizing and worrying at the same time. When a person resorts to this thought pattern, he begins simulating horrible things in his mind and then worrying about them, too! For example, a man who is just relaxing at home may begin to agonize over rising gas prices. Or he may worry about suddenly being in the middle of a gang fight while walking home. Maybe he will fantasize about large-scale disasters, such as a mega-tsunami or a magnetic pulse disabling the city's power grid. This form of daydreaming can be extremely harmful because the effects are likely to linger through the evening or even the next day. To quell this habit, you can use the following rationalizations:

• #1: Am I really going to experience any time soon?
• #2: How likely is it actually for this scenario actually play out?
• #3: What are the chances that I will encounter this misfortune at all?
• #4 If I only had 1 day left on this Earth, would this still matter to me?

Negative Habit #4: Unreasonable Generalizations

Often when we pass negative judgments on other people, we don't feel relieved. We feel even more frustrated! Why? Because negative judgment intensifies the feeling that we have been wronged. Negativity keeps reinforcing itself in a bad way. For example, say a teenage motorcyclist cuts off a car on the road. The driver in the car feels afraid for a second that there's going to be a collision. When the motorcycle disappears, the driver begins fuming at the motorcyclist's ineptness. He utters complaints like, This town is full of spaced-out bozos! Of course, reality has definite limits. It is highly unlikely that a whole town consisting of thousands of people would be driving the same way as the motorcycle driver in the scenario. If you happen to find yourself making generalizations that cause you even more stress than usual, examine your judgments and try to reconcile them with reality. It's just a paradigm shift that you handle privately, within yourself. Once you begin reflecting on your own thoughts and judgments, you will see that such over-generalized opinions harm only you.

Negative Habit #5: Wild Emotions

Our emotions represent raw mental states. We should never trust them as the sole basis for decisions and actions. Balance emotion with your good judgment. Otherwise, you will find yourself stressed with the negative consequences. For example, a husband may feel jealous that his wife is hanging out with old friends. He may conclude that he is no longer important in the family. This negativity compounds and soon he decides divorce is the only recourse. Problems that are solvable with levelheaded communication turn into a life-changing crisis. This extreme example shows how stress can lead to irrational perception, then emotional decision-making, and finally panic-motivated catastrophe!

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