Nick Meredith's Blog

The current set of blogs is dealing with stress management during the credit crunch.

Last time I covered what stress really is, i.e. your individual response to something that you perceive is happening in your environment. You make this perception through things that you are exposed to (see or hear or feel) or even things that you play out in your mind which are unlikely to happen in reality. When eventually the perception of “too much is happening for me to cope with” is reached, then the fight or flight response is activated and this is when you start to notice unpleasant physiological symptoms such as feeling on edge, churning stomach, negative thoughts and the inability to concentrate, and in some cases illness (eg. frequent colds and flu) as the immune system is compromised.
Start by taking response-ability for stress

Once you accept that stress is your response to things rather than something that happens to you from the outside, you can begin to have “response–ability” and then can learn the ability to respond appropriately.
Learn to relax and take some daily time out to do it

I started last time by talking about the most important way to start to change your response, i.e. taking the time out and learning to relax. There are many ways to do this and many benefits to be achieved from doing it (other than noticing how it reduces stress). To find out more of the detail, please refer to my previous newsletter (Tip 1: Taking time out to relax) at www.mindsigh.wordpress.com. My website provides some additional ideas about learning to relax at http://www.nickmeredith.co.uk/page_1210623551920.html. This newsletter focuses on the ability to cut down your inputs (or perceived inputs), giving you a quick and handy overview of where things really are at.

Tip 2: Cut down the number of “things to do” in your life

One of the thinking styles often associated with stress is to perceive things as being worse than they are and in this case I am talking specifically about the number of things you think you have got going on in your life. It is very important to objectively sit down and take a reality check to see just how true this perception is. I can’t tell you how important it is to do this, in most cases; my clients find themselves feeling a lot better once they have completed the exercise (explained next)

The “things to do” stock take!

How many things have you got outstanding on your “to do list” at the moment? Do you even have a “to do list”? Either way, write down all the things you have got to get done, remember to include all aspects of your life, not just work! and then do the following exercise. To help you, I have created a worksheet that you can use as a guide/template for doing this, you can download it here: -

For each entry on the sheet provided, put down your “thing to do” and then answer the rest of the appropriate blocks in the worksheet HONESTLY. Get everything down to start with, no matter howbig or small it might seeem to you (include home, work, hobbies, finances, community, spiritual, health etc)Having completed this exercise and worksheet, you should have noticed one or more of the following things:-
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• When you get it all down on paper, you have go a clear idea of what is really going on in your life
  

  [Normally you find that perception isn't reality and that reality is not as bad as you first thought. From here you can start to take response-ability for what really needs to be done]
  

• There will be things on the list that you should scrap immediately or give to somebody else
  

  [Be merciless here! if you haven't done them and 1 month has passed, how likely are you to do them in the future? they will just stay on the list and continue make you feel bad for not doing them. If they are just not important or urgent, then scrap them as well, otherwise you may end up doing them instead of something that is important – a common avoidance strategy!!]
  

• You will notice that a percentage of your tasks are for other people (and are based on their own criteria of urgency and importance)
  

  [With these tasks it is very important to consider this: every time you say Yes to someone, you are saying No to everything else. (Owen Fitzpatrick). For each task, go back to the person, and assess whether they are still important/urgent or even relevant to him/her. Quite often you find that the task no longer applies because things have changed. If you have multiple tasks from the same person, then ask them to prioritise between their own tasks or accept that one will be impacted by another. You may be surprised that these people will be sympathetic to your situation. This topic is covered in more detail in a future newsletter]
  

• There will be things on the list that you must do immediately because they are important and urgent and will make your life better (in your honest opinion!)
  

  [If they are both important and urgent for you, or you have checked with the "other person" that this is still the case; and that they are aware of the consequences of doing this task instead of something else, then do immediately (or as soon as possible). These tasks are the ones that will make the quickest and biggest difference to your situation and will help you feel better about things]
  

When you have got a clear picture, scrapped or handed over as many unimportant/non-urgent tasks and completed the important/urgent ones, then you will need to start to prioritise properly and regularly in order to stay in control of things again – this will be covered next time. In the mean time, please, please complete the above exercise and notice how therapeutic it is for you. It helps to do this exercise every few months as a way of keeping things relevant to what is happening in your life.

This, combined with the relaxation techniques from the last blog will already start to make a difference in your life. Sign

In the next blog I will address Tip 3: Improve the way in which you choose what to do each day/week/month through prioritisation and delegation.