Reduce the stress factors

As it is not long ago that I have been on vacation, I wondered why I already looking forward to take a rest. This week I was (already) very active (again). One of my intentions during the last days was to find out what does really stress me.

It is not only having few time for doing many things that causes stress. It is also some particular situations that can stress or either particular persons. And it can be elements of your life in general or just a specific way you are doing something. As I found more and more stress sources I got aware of the horrific downsides of stress:

• Reduced quality of what you are doing now and what you will do in the next minutes
• Reduced motivation and therefore also reduced happiness
• Reduced health in the long run (One can stand a stressy week with ease, a month is possible, 3 months is exhausting, 6 months of stress will reduce your life expectancy)
• Because of the restricted view when under stress:
  
  • Trapping into pitfalls
  • Missing important information
  • Doing things wrong - making errors
  • Danger of doing harm to others (while choosing wrong words, producing incidents while not concentrated on the traffic while driving, ...)
  • Not seeing smart alternative solutions for the current problem
  • Missing opportunities (that could have positive effects on a thing that is important for you but has not to do with the thing your are currently occupied with).
• You get a bad image (people think you can't manage your life well)

And the worst: All the above produces either more stress! It is a doom loop, a vicious circle!

So cut off your stress factors!

A first important step is to be very attentive of what is causing stress for you, it can be

• Too much to do in too few time
  You have to plan your time well and plan at least double of the time for a thing as you would expect. And do leave free space in your calender. And unclutter your life. Do less things to have more time for the more important things.
• Situations that are linked with fears
  Find the reason of your fears and solve them or avoid the situations (find a patch not to get into that exact situation).
• Situations that are new
  Get familiar with new situations - take them as a new opportunity to learn and gain knowledge.
• Things that you might have thought they are for your comfort
  Not everything we have got with the intention to improve our life (comfort or quality) does (still) give what it gave in the past or what we expected.
• Methods we use to solve particular daily problems
  Because of old habits we might handle specific events in the same bad way we did it for years. In most cases bad habits worked well in the past or worked well for similar situations (but not for this one). - Be flexible and search for new solutions producing less stress.
• Particular persons may produce stress
  This can be co-workers, your boss or even friends. An important tip here: In a lot of cases you are producing stress (also) for them. So do not stress others and they will stress you less. And sure, where possible you can also avoid contact to those people.
• Moving or being fast in general
  It might be because of fears, because of a manic phase or simply because you think that you will not survive if you don't do everything possible to accomplish more or earn more money. Doing things slowly does not mean not to do them (don't mix that up with procrastination).

Not convinced so far to cut off stress factors immediately? - There is one sentence I was soooo glad to read at www.slowdownnow.org because it helped me so changing my intentions:

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly.

Read the Slow Manifesto at www.slowdownnow.org.

Related posts: Why not multitasking how to, Why investing enough time rules, Change hype, Urging to forge at full speed, The present moment, Hurry home ... no more running, When to strictly avoid multitasking, How to be happy, Slowing down, About drugs, Speed, Productivity limits, External success factors.