STRESS MANAGEMENT
To a traditional thinker, stress is automatic, and bad. I would like to offer that instead stress can be very controllable, and able to be used in a positive way for good. One way to make stress a valuable tool, is to find ways to use this emotion to propel us forward in a direction that is desirable to us rather than let it become an emotion that overwhelms us. Imagine how good it will feel to feel balanced between work and family for example. So how can we do this easily and effortlessly? Try this out:
Imagine for a moment that your life is a stovetop. A stovetop is easy to control right? A typical stovetop has four burners. Now put a pot on each burner, and assign each of the four burners a different aspect of your life. For this example we will make the four burners the following:
Burner one- Family
Burner two- Work
Burner three- Finances
Burner four- Health issues
Now imagine that all day long these four burners are seemingly overheating all the time and each pot seems full and about to boil over. By imagining this stovetop, you can easily decide to control each burner, by deciding to manually turn down the heat on some of the burners as you seem appropriate. For example, you may decide that while you are at work, you will decide to turn down burners 1,3,and 4 so you can more effectively concentrate on burner 2, and when you are at home, you may decide to turn off burner 2 and concentrate on burners 1,3, or 4. By trying this exercise you are enabling yourself to control each aspect of your life without having to feel that everything is out of control or balance simply by controlling the heat levels that you allow to each burner, and when someone else tries to come in and turn your burner up, simply reach down and turn the burner back down, and realize that YOU control your burners, not someone else! I call this exercise becoming your own stress chef. By becoming your own master stress chef, you can not only control each aspect of your life, but you can design, create and cook up a healthy balanced life of your choosing! This takes practice, but with practice it will become easier each time you try it. Now I have no problem putting a co-worker on the back burner and turning the heat way down, its gotten easy, and I have used this strategy in a positive way to avoid work burnout. Something that used to seem overwhelming, now seems easily controllable. Try it, become your own master stress chef, and melt your stress away!
This article was written by CPC, CWLC Russ Fugerer owner of True North Coaching
I can be contacted by email Truenorthpath@yahoo.com or via my website: