If you want to live without stress you should first learn to respect this simple rule.
"The right attitude can turn negative stress into positive stress."
Hans Selye.
Vacation period, in theory you should be nice relaxed, maybe sprawled on the beach, yet, nothing to do, you are not serene, it is as if you could not live without stress.
You constantly think about the exam to prepare for September, the amount of work that awaits you when you return to the office, the mountain of emails you will have to answer and as if that were not enough the blackberry / iPhone / iPad continues to trill non-stop.
The harder you try, the more you try to distract yourself with new activities and the more bad thoughts come back to visit! What to do in these cases?
The world falls, this time I change my life!
Sincerely, how many times have you said this sentence?
We generally start thinking about it around January 1st, atstart of holidays and early September. These are the so-called "cathartic" periods. But the years go by and… (drum roll) does not change a beloved tuft!
Maybe even this year you promised yourself that during the holidays you will adopt that good habit, you will read all those beautiful books and those beautiful guides, in short, you will not waste even a minute of your precious free time. True?! But deep down, you already know how it will end and this does not make you feel comfortable at all ...
Well, this year, if you really want to change your life and learn how to live without stress, I suggest a slightly different approach.
“The Rule”: the rule
Andre, but do you think you are going around a lot more about this rule, or you tell me ... it's not like I have the whole morning to dedicate to you!
Have you fastened your seat belts ?! No, because The Secret gives him a blowjob to this rule! If they put Anthony Robbins, Robin Sharma and Richard Bandler together in one room I doubt they could come up with anything more effective. I mean, we're talking about NASA-level stuff ... not pizza and figs!
Ok, get ready, now I'll reveal to you ... (music to create the right suspense and deep voice): "The Rule". A millenary secret guarded with ferocity by the noble Indian tribe of the Cacapoco. Once you have discovered "The Rule" nothing will be the same again ... Here you go ... "The Rule".
"Finish everything you start"
Impressed ?! Eh I know… Rhonda Byrne is pulling her hair out of envy, but "The Rule"It's my stuff! I have the rights of the Coppirait! There is no tripe for cats: nothing to do.
Ok, now I'm serious. Sometimes I just can't resist making a little irony about all those authors (and readers!) Who take personal growth too seriously, as if to change our lives and live happily we couldn't do without mysterious techniques and esoteric secrets, almost always snubbing the enormous power of common sense applied.
But back to “The Rule”: of course to finish what we start it's not science fiction at all, it's just common sense. Yet we continually disregard this rule:
- We start a new project and promptly, once the initial enthusiasm is over, we put it on the back burner, letting it accumulate together with the many “debris” of our life.
- We venture into the study of a new subject and then ... "poof", the passion disappears, and even here we let books, guides and manuals accumulate.
- Not to mention our e-mail inbox: a cemetery of emails to which we have to respond, discussions that have remained in the air, decisions to be made “ungiornobohforsechissà “.
Apply The Rule to overcome stress
Ok, this "rule" seems to me absolutely acceptable Andre, but I don't understand that it has to do with the fact that I'm always nervous.
Much of the stress that distinguishes our days is linked to the dozens of activities that we have started without completing them: each of these activities resembles a computer program or to an app on your iPhone / iPad. Whenever we make a new commitment or start a new business, we are effectively using up a small amount of the "computing resources" of our brain.
Taken individually, these activities consume laughable portions of the attention span of our mind. The problem is when all these thoughts / worries / commitments / activities start to accumulate, slowing down and burdening the "system".
If a computer, in these conditions, starts to heat up, slow down and give errors, our mind responds with different symptoms, which are the classics stress symptoms: difficulty concentrating, anxiety, insomnia, generalized nervousness.
What do you do when your computer crashes? Reset.
To do the same with your mind, and apply The Rule in practice, you must learn to "close too many open programs". Here are 4 strategies to learn how to do it:
- Empty your inbox. Inbox zero is one of the most effective ways to manage your emails. Immediately reply to emails that you can reply to in less than 2 minutes, archive those that you have already read or that do not need a response, enter the emails that require a more detailed response in the follow-up folder, enter activities in your to-do list linked to specific emails.
- Usa la tua to-do list. Living without stress means first and foremost being able to free your mind. If you try to remember all the activities you need to do, how do you plan to free your mind? Use a to-do list to record all the things you need to do. If you want to know how I manage my to-do list read this article.
- Keep a personal journal. Writing daily in your personal diary helps you not only to clear your mind, but also to make sense of your days, writing down what you have managed to do and what you have yet to complete. This is a great ploy to fool the brain.
- Delete an activity. Is your commitment as president of the Young Marmots really necessary ?! Or that subscription to Geologists Dark Punk magazine ?! Hobbies and passions are one thing, useless activities that only create confusion in our life are quite another: learn to simplify your life. Delete. Delete. Delete.
Apply The Rule and these simple tricks today and finally learn to live without stress.
