Stop Stressing Yourself Out
It’s very common to cause your own stress. Everyone does it. So don’t stress about your stress, learn
some valuable techniques to alleviate it. Susan Fletcher, a practicing psychologist and stress
management expert has tips to help:
Don’t read into things so much. “Sometimes a look is just a look and a dirty coffee cup is just a dirty
coffee cup. It’s not a passive-aggressive way to say you are not appreciated,” Fletcher says. Don’t
make things bigger than they need to be?with people or work. Some people make a project bigger than it
needs to be in an effort to increase their own value, but they are increasing their own stress as a
result.
Learn how to transfer trust. “I really like Stephen M.R. Covey’s stuff from his book Speed of Trust. He
says people have to be able to trust before they feel it. Just like with your kids when you give them a
little rope. And with someone who works for you, you have to let them fail because failure is
feedback,” Fletcher says. “Don’t just say, ‘It’s easier to do myself.’”
Recognize when you are being inefficient. “People who are stressed get stuck answering e-mails for two
hours at the expense of higher value items that need to be taken care of, “Fletcher says. “Don’t get
lost in inefficient behavior. Ask yourself, ‘What’s my ultimate outcome I want here and what do I need
to get there?’”
Find an accountability partner to help you meet goals. “Choose a friend or a family member?probably not
sommeone who lives with you because you don’t want to muddy the waters. It has to be someone you will
listen to but who will hold you accountable.”
Say no sometimes. “You have to say no to things you might enjoy, but you are not in line with where you
are professionally or personally at the moment,” Fletcher says. Then you can spend your time on what
matters to you most.
Setting Priorities Three Mistakes to Avoid Leo Babauta October 2, 2009 While it’s easy to be busy and
crank out the tasks on your to-do list, it’s a bit more difficult to choose to do the important things
– to live your life by priorities that you set for yourself.
But living a life of smart priorities is one of the best ways to become much more effective, to make
the most of your time and reach your goals with less effort. Instead of running around like a chicken
with no head, you can walk calmly in the right direction, do less but be more powerful in what you do.
Something you should remember, however: priorities are not what you say they are they’re what you
actually do. So take a moment to reflect on how you spend your time, what your priorities have been
lately, until now. And reflect on whether those are the priorities you want to live. If not, let’s look
at how to change the situation as simply as possible.
Setting Priorities
Three Big Mistakes
By Leo Babauta
Most people make one of three mistakes when it comes to setting priorities:
1. They don’t think about it. People often do their work and live their lives without consciously
setting priorities. They’re showing their priorities through their actions, but they’re not consciously
set. As a result, they end up living lives and doing work they don’t really want. They fall into a life
they don’t want rather than designing the life they want.
2. They make it too complicated. Some people do set priorities, but they do so with complicated systems
of numbers and letters. “A1″ is given to top priorities, then “A2″ to the next level, down to “B1″ and
“C2″ and so forth. The truth is, you can only really have a couple of real priorities at a time. If you
think you have many priorities, you aren’t being realistic — you will end up putting a couple of those
“priorities” on the backburner — which means they weren’t priorities in the first place.
3. They don’t live their priorities. It’s one thing to set priorities, it’s another to live them. What
you actually do, how you live your life, reveals your actual priorities. Your priorities are what you
live, not what you put on paper. Too often people say their priorities are one thing, but their lives
show those “priorities” are given very little actual time.
How to Set and Live Priorities
To live a life of conscious priorities, avoid the above mistakes with three simple solutions:
1. Consciously set priorities. Take time today, or sometime this week, to sit down and figure out what
you want your priorities to be — at work and in life. What’s most important to you? What goals are
most important? What do you want your life to look like? Who is most important? Reflect on these, then
write down your top priorities.
2. Keep them simple and focused. When setting your priorities, choose just 2-3 to really focus on. If
you have a longer list, put the others on a “someday” list to focus on later. You can’t live more than
2-3 priorities anyway, and if you keep things simple, it’ll allow you to truly focus on these
priorities.
3. Live your priorities. Keeping things simple and focused makes it so much easier to actually live
your priorities. Take time each morning to remind yourself of your priorities, and to put them into
your schedule. Block off time each day for your top goals or priorities, so your life will actually
reflect the priorities you set.
