How to snap out of it and send stress packing
There are bad days and there are bad days…
- Everything is going wrong from traffic, to your cell phone’s reception, to your bank account.
- The important meeting goes south because you did not prepare as well as you could have.
- That annoying co-worker sends you an email blaming you for something, and cc’s everyone.
When stress hits ask yourself the following questions:
How do I want to be? This is no time for a guilt trip; skip thinking that it is silly for you to be mad or upset-that’s not helpful. Instead, ask yourself how you want to be. That question alone has a way of taking us beyond the stress for a much-needed moment of perspective and can help lessen our fight-or-flight instinct. How do I want to be?
Am I willing to stay stressed about this? We do have a choice in the matter. Even though stress can feel like it has a life of its own, it does not. If you let this be the last straw with that co-worker, then maybe you are consciously permitting yourself to stay stressed, and you need to work out a (logical) action plan. If the answer to this question is, “No, I am not willing to stay stressed about this“, then half of the work is done with the simple acknowledgment that you do not want to let the stress take over.
What secondary gain do I get from feeling this way? Sorry, but this is true,if you are stressed out all the time or if you stress about the same stuff repeatedly, then there might be some secondary gain to your stress. Perhaps your stress is an excuse to help you avoid a deadline, boredom, a relationship, moving on or trying something new, etc. Think about it.
The mechanism that triggers the stress in our brains and quickly passes to our bodies is actually meant for life-threatening events-which is why stress itself can feel life threatening. Questioning our internal reactions without admonishment or recrimination is sometimes all that is needed to send stress on its way.
“Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.”
-Jane Wagner
Give yourself credit for even the slightest improvement on your stress reactions. If you used to get upset every time the computer was slow to boot-up, but today you waited patiently, congratulate yourself. Build on that progress.
