Welcome to my January 2009 newsletter! I’ll jump straight in today…
IMPORTANT: Do you want to get more sleep? Do want to fall asleep and stay asleep?
If you are too tired to read on, but curious about how I can help then just click here.
In the last 3 months, the number of people clicking on my “insomnia” and “sleep” web pages has gone through the roof. For me, this comes as no surprise considering what is happening in the economy plus taking into account the current theme of my newsletters i.e. “surviving stress in the credit crunch”. Now here’s the thing, it is well known that when stress and anxiety is more prevalent in your daily life, your sleep patterns can be greatly disturbed. Sleep is one of your basic needs as a human being. Without adequate sleep, you can soon descend into walking zombies with increased grumpiness, anxiety, inability to cope with daily routine and in extreme cases … depression. The opposite also applies, not enough sleep might be the biggest contributor to being stressed.
I am currently in the process of finalising my next hypnosis product, which is specifically designed to help you fall asleep and stay asleep. I have been testing it with a group of my clients, and am getting very positive feedback. It uses some powerful hypnosis techniques to imitate the way in which the mind and body bring about the onset of sleep. In fact, the producer in the recording studio said that he was struggling to stay awake while we recorded it.
If you want to be kept in the loop for when I release this (which is soon), then let me know as soon as possible by clicking on thisweb link and entering your email address in the fields provided. That way, if you are not interested then I don’t need to bother you anymore.
Here’s the link again http://www.nickmeredith.co.uk/insomnia.html
What are you going to do today?
Following on from my last newsletter “taking stock of your things to do”, this month I want to focus on a pragmatic way to choose what you do on a daily and weekly basis in order to be more in control of things (and reduce your stress levels). If you haven’t yet done so, I recommend going back over the last newsletter and completing the “things to do stock take”. This will give you a good, realistic and solid to do list from which to start.
What you place your attention on gets done. Each new day finds many things competing for your attention so it is important to choose wisely how you will use your time. This means purposefully choosing and prioritising what you do.
To get a sense of what I mean, think about what would happen if there was a “free for all” or “first come first served” policy in a queue for the hospital A&E unit. It would lead to total disarray for both patients and staff, and even unnecessary death. It would be the people in the queue who pushed, shoved and shouted the loudest that got served first – and probably not the right people. Instead, the hospitals use a triage system which is based on a few key criteria (like who is closest to death) to decide who gets helped first. And although the odd patient might be left waiting for hours with a painful sprained ankle, he/she will survive and a few people’s lives may have been saved during that time.
I urge you to apply parts of this approach to your own queue of things to do. Here is a good way to do it. The advantage you have over the hospital A&E department is that you have a better idea of the tasks in your queue and therefore you can do your triage proactively.
These 5 steps will help you choose and prioritise your tasks. Do this comprehensively once a week, then review and adjust daily.
- Decide quickly what you will NOT do this week (What’s NOTIMPORTANT and NOT URGENT?) and put them somewhereso that they can’t compete for your attention. This is very liberating.
- What items are IMPORTANT and URGENT? Do these FIRST.This will normally help you feel more relaxed because these are generally the pressing actions that are causing your some of your stress.
- What items are IMPORTANT and NOT URGENT? Do these NEXT and spread them over the coming week. According to Steven Covey (author of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) IMPORTANT and NOT URGENT actions are the most important actions on your to do list and he suggests that this is where you spend most of your time. These are typically the ones that you tend to just keep putting off until it is too late and then cause unnecessary stress again. The more time you focus here in the medium to long term, the less stressful actions you will end up with. Having adopted this approach for a long time myself, I can attest that it works
- ALWAYS assign slots of time for each task upfront – this helps to form a simple weekly & daily plan – Remember to leave sufficient space for surprise UGRENT unplanned tasks (you will generally always have something that crops up out of nowhere) – but remember to prioritise in the same way before just blindly doing it. Remember the quote from the last newsletter ”every time you say yes to something/someone, you say no to everything/everyone else” [Owen Fitzpatrick]
- Before starting each task, think about good feeling you will have once you have completed it. This helps create motivation for the tasks (especially mundane ones!). A common reason for not doing something is that you dwell on the need for starting or doing the task rather than what the outcome achieves for you, and this puts you off.
My advice to you is to choose to make a habit of this behaviour and notice how much more in control you feel!
Finally, just to let you know, I have also noticed an increase in the number of people contacting me for driving test nerves and post natal depression issues.
If you know anybody who is suffering with either of these, please direct them to the following pages where they can find out some useful information.
For driving test nerves,
Tell them to go to http://www.nickmeredith.co.uk/driving-test-nerves.htmlor even http://www.drive-test-nerves-away.com . I have been getting some good feedback on this product, and have even sold it to some driving instructors in other parts of England. The product is cheap and designed to appeal to people’s common sense. Here are examples of the feedback…
“i was very nervous about my driving test and hoped it would calm me down for the build up . i passed my test because i was so much calmer and relaxed after using the cd a week before and even the morning before my test .. it was excellent”
“It me think about my driving difficulties in a new conscious way, followed by hypnosis”
“My daughter used it and she found it very useful”
“It made me look at the driving test in a way I never had before….. it was really common sense, but before using your product, I never thought to think of it in that way. up till then I had always found myself thinking about failing the test and it never dawned on me to imagine what would happen if I passed the test… i would definitely recommend this to other people”
For Post Natal Depression
Tell them to go to http://www.nickmeredith.com/post-natal-depression.html . I have spent a lot of time creating a web page with useful information about post natal depression and tips on how to deal with it. I want to get the message to women that “it doesn’t have to be this way forever” and “its not your fault” and “you can do something about it”.
Until next time
Nick
PS. You might find these web sites useful;
http://www.nickmeredith.co.uk [My general website for therapy and coaching]
http://www.hypnobirthing-peterborough.co.uk [a powerful ante natal programme for teaching mothers to experience comfortable birth without fear]
http://www.drive-test-nerves-away.co.uk [a cheap hypnosis programme to help remove driving test nerves]
http://www.experience-your-birthright.co.uk [a cheap hypnosis programme to help mothers build the right state of mind to have the most comfortable birth]