Life’s too short to stress out…(Part 3)

Fol­low­ing on from part two of my 3-post series tar­get­ing stress…

What will I do?

Now is the time that you look at the action list, and begin to cull back the actions to those that are most prac­ti­ca­ble. Some are going to be com­pletely absurd, so drop them quick smart.

Then there are other pos­si­ble actions that are actu­ally great ideas, but you don’t cur­rently have the means or per­haps the train­ing, or some other defi­ciency that makes under­tak­ing that course of action impos­si­ble for the time being.

At some point, you will arrive at a list of actions that looks like it will work to alle­vi­ate your stress fac­tors and you will be on the home straight.

This is a list of things will gen­er­ally con­sist of either:

Action­able tasks: dis­tinct tasks that can under­taken, or
Men­tal­ity change: you may need to start think­ing and act­ing in a dif­fer­ent way.

If you need to change your men­tal­ity, then you need to write in your daily affir­ma­tion what it is your want to change about your­self. You need to read about what you want to change about your­self on a daily basis so that it becomes a reality.

If you define some action­able tasks, then fol­low them onto the next part.

What comes first? What comes next?

Pri­ori­ti­sa­tion is a skill of lead­ers and tak­ing the pro-active step in get­ting your shit together is the mark of a leader.

Fig­ur­ing out the order in which this action list can be tack­led is impor­tant for numer­ous reasons:

Some things can­not hap­pen before others.

Some things have an immov­able date, so the may need to be done before some­thing else which has a flex­i­ble date.

Somethings…are just long over due and if you leave them any longer, you might live to regret not tak­ing care of them.

Put a date to it. Get it done.

Once your list is pri­ori­tised, you need to set defin­able dates to under­take your action­able tasks. It has been well doc­u­mented, that if there is no defin­able strict time­line for some­thing, chances are you will never get it done. Make a promise to your­self that if you define a date to get some­thing done, you need to stick to it, no excuses.

This is integrity and integrity is impor­tant as F*CK in life.

Do it.

Ain’t noth­ing to it baby, just pick that first thing you need to get done today and do it. No if’s or buts, if you can’t keep a promise to your­self, you can’t keep a promise to anyone.

Friend­ship end, mar­riages break up and peo­ple die with regret when promises are not kept. So keep it.

How long should it take?

This isn’t a short process by any means, but then nei­ther is life and all it’s prob­lems. I find it incred­u­lous that some peo­ple will suf­fer under the weight of prob­lems for months and some­times years, affect­ing their health and propen­sity to see clearly. But when you sug­gest that spend­ing a day solv­ing these things, they balk at it.

Truth is, you’re impor­tant, make sure you never lose sight of that, you need to take care of your men­tal health because that is your respon­si­bil­ity, not some­one else’s. My take is that this process takes as long as it needs to, don’t put a time limit on some­thing so important.

How often?

Why cut your fin­ger­nails? They’ll grow back.

Why mow the lawn? It’ll grow back.

Why take care of the problems? …

You take care of all these things because if you don’t, it will end in a colos­sal clus­ter fuck, that’s why.

And the sim­ply answer to “How often” is this — you should do this every week­end until you feel you have ascer­tained your domin­ion over the things that affect you, then cut it back to the times when you feel stressed out, this could be weeks apart, it could be months apart.

Over and out.

And that brings us to the end of the 3 part series deal­ing with stress. I hope you’ve gained some­thing out of it, it def­i­nitely isn’t a quick band aid solu­tion, but if you spend the effort and time I think you will come out of it on the other side a bet­ter more resilient per­son. Let me know how it goes!

As usual, I totally wel­come com­ments, cri­tiques and shoutouts =)

Stay cool.

Daz