Christine McFadden, a veterinarian from Merced, California went for her morning walk on March 26, 2002, leaving her four children, ages 17, 15, 14 and 5 sleeping peacefully. She had no reason to suspect something was wrong that day, but she would soon come back to her home to discover that her husband had experienced so much stress that he had taken a gun and killed all four of her children and himself.
Christine McFadden was miraculously able to recuperate from that tragic experience and move on with her life, eventually remarrying and having a set of twin girls.
Stress can ruin lives depending on how we deal with it. There are some easy ways that you can manage the stress in your life constructively and make good progress towards the goals you have set for yourself.
Tim Ferris, author of The 4-hour Work Week”, a New York Times best seller, a Wall Street Journal best seller and a Business Week best seller, has some basic advice for people about time management and dealing with stress.
In a nutshell, Tim Ferris has laid out a plan for people who are working from 9-5 and feeling like they can’t get everything done that they wished for during that time. His golden nugget of time management is to create a business working plan that is automated, where the you in the picture is completely replaceable and the money comes in regardless of the way you spend your time in any one day.
Tim Ferris recommends cutting out any time wasters and to look at your list of things you have to get done and make some cutbacks. If you had to eliminate one of your daily activities because you need an extra kidney, what would that activity be? His book is full of brilliant ideas about dealing with life.
I have compiled a list of 10 ways for you to effectively deal with stress in your life.
- Write down or keep a mental list of the environmental stressors that make you feel like pulling out your hair.
- During the day, rate each situation that is causing your stress on a scale of 1 – 10 with a 10 being you are ready to jump off a cliff.
- When you have rated your stress a 10, ask yourself what you can do about it in the present, right now.
- If you can’t do anything about it right now, decide when you can do something about it and make a plan to accomplish it.
- The world is programmed to solve problems between 9 and 5 whether you have a job that requires your presence or not. Can you take care of this level outside of the normal 9 to 5 time slot?
- Use the alcoholics’ anonymous concept – Grant me the wisdom to know when I can do nothing about this situation.
- Pick one person that you can calmly and frankly discuss this stressor with.
- Ask yourself how a three year old would handle this situation and then compliment yourself for not doing that.
- For every stressful situation that causes you a level 10 experience, find 3 things that you are extremely grateful for.
- Remember that people who have no stress are dead.
How do you deal with stress?