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100-Day Challenge, Day 44. And about a ‘Cure’ for Stress.

13 Sunday Aug 2017

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This week I have been mostly exercising every two days, eating sensibly and producing like a dervish. I discovered that ‘being on holidays’ equates to ’90-120 minutes a day dealing with voluntary tasks’, in that two days of this week felt like I was one of those CEOs who claims to get a million emails a day. Every single one I dealt with generated two more, I swear. Hence this input on Stress.

Stress is self-imposed. (Cue anger.) Okay, let me temper that a bit.

On Monday I went to Cardiff Yes Group, a post-Tony Robbins event ‘alumni’ event where personal development lecturers keep the audience ‘on track’ with their commitments. All are welcome, and there are UK-wide events available.

The speaker suggested that (one of) the reasons for stress arise from overwhelm and an inability to cope with change and pressure because life/we/bosses etc haven’t allowed time for our neurology to get respite from the constant changes of direction (e.g. from interruptions like constant demands for attention from emails). That inability to cope can be genuine and physical, or it can be a perception. By that, I mean that the stress is all too real to the sufferer but if they weren’t so pressured they’d realise they could control it, if they only knew how.

In other words, the stressed individual says, “I have 101 things to do and I just can’t see a way to do it.” The individual with a control strategy says, “I have 101 things to do today and 8 hours in which to do them. Do-able.” That is 480 minutes – about 4.5 minutes a ‘thing’, and for every ‘thing’ that takes a minute, that rate expands.

Time management might seem like a management cliché but in my opinion, from years of applying it, time management properly taught, accepted, encouraged and applied is an absolute – yes, absolute – cure for stress.

Please understand, I am not talking about stress resulting from trauma, accident, disaster, relationship failures and so on. That’s different, even if some relevant TM training can help. I am talking about task overwhelm in work and in the home.

Charles R Hobbs, in his epic book ‘Timepower’, suggests that high self-esteem is served by the ability to be in control of events. I am fairly confident when I suggest that those with genuinely high levels of justifiable self-esteem (as opposed to ego) rarely suffer from work-related stress. And that is because they are, or they feel they are in complete control of what’s ‘appenin’, OR they know that they can take control – even of the unexpected. They have techniques and approaches that enable that control.

In the mid-1990s I had what I call ‘an episode’ where this 6’ tall, macho, fightin’, drivin’, chasin’, action-man copper left a boss’s office in tears and went home before his shift was due to start. (Short version, I think it was slow burn.) Fortunately, I had been reading The 7 Habits and books like Timepower for years. I went home, took the wife and kids out for a family meal, and took stock. I recognised that what was happening was a stress build-up.

Then I took control and decided what I was going to do about the situation. I was back at work within 48 hours asking for what I needed to regain control. And got it. Never happened again.

We all know of people who do the tears thing and aren’t seen for months. They lost control and didn’t or couldn’t get it back, and that was because they didn’t know that there was an alternative to pills.

Values-based time management – might not be penicillin but by all that’s holy it’s a damn good treatment for what ails a lot of people.

Try it out. My book or theirs, you decide. It’s you who controls your decisions if you want to.

 

People don’t like being told what to think. Think for yourself.

13 Sunday Nov 2016

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.” Stephen R Covey

Despite the uninformed dismissiveness of friends and foe I have, for the past 20-odd years, been an advocate of the 7 Habits ‘philosophy’ – not a good word but it’s short. People who deride the awfully-named ‘self-help’ genre and therefore who have never taken a moment to understand it, suggest that the field, and the 7 Habits book in particular, have the intention of restricting my (their) thinking. Of course, some fields like Scientology and cults do just that, but the essential difference between what my friends think and the actuality is this: the 7 Habits do not in any way tell you what to think. What it does is tell you is that you can think, and provides a framework you can apply to thinking. But what you think is entirely up to you.

I write this week’s blog following the election of The Donald to the Presidency of the USA. Last night, following (arguably) anti-democratic and violent protests by people deriding ‘hate politics’ – the irony escapes them – I watched a YouTube vignette you can see here (pardon the ad). In it, the speaker tells the politicians that the reason DT was elected was because the people had realised that the ‘liberal elite’ (read socialists-with-a-small-s and their supporters) had been telling us what we can think, and what we can say, for so long that the electorate said “enough!”. He suggested that attacks on those who held and proffered thoughts other than the politically-correct had given rise to a backlash. People were being viciously and loudly attacked for having the temerity to hold and verbalise a different opinion for so long, that they spoke out in the ballot box. They voted, “STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO THINK!”

I agree. I suspect that the (quote Fox News, for a laugh) the ‘mainstream liberal media’ had spent so much time attacking DT that ‘the people’ decided to stop being told what to think, and to ‘think’ and therefore ‘do’ the opposite, perhaps out of spite for the media. I don’t know if this is so, but as the guy who sometimes likes the underdog to win, this constant ‘look what he did!’ approach just pushes me to think the opposite. I suspect the US electorate felt the same.

Which takes me to the quote and tone of this post.

Contrary to the political elite’s apparent view, I DO have the choice on what to think. Habit 1 is about being proactive and realising there IS a choice, and I can use a lot of things to make that choice.

And if I am left alone to think it WITHOUT being attacked for thinking things, eventually I can use my self-awareness, independent will, creative imagination and conscience to decide what is right and what is wrong, for myself.

I don’t need to be lectured, I need to be informed and encouraged. I don’t need to be attacked, I need evidence. I don’t need to be shouted down, I need to be heard. And above all, to hear you I need to know that YOU understand what you are saying and that it is objective, that it is not just a dogmatic ideology (well-meant or not), one which you have not objectively tested but to which you slavishly adhere.

That’s the odd reason why, even though I don’t like Jeremy Corbyn’s politics, I can respect him because he truly believes them, while I cannot respect Diane Abbott because she espouses socialism and quality education for all while sending her own kids to private school.

I will question the ‘thinking ability’ of anyone who is slavishly adherent to a ‘side’ in politics. And I will listen to anyone who is willing to change their mind. For example, I ‘hated’ UK gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell for a long time – not because he was gay but because of his confrontational tactics. But I saw him last week defending the right of Irish bakers NOT to be forced by the Irish courts to contravene their values in wanting to not bake a pro-gay marriage cake. That demonstrated thinking. Quality thinking. I can now respect, even admire him.

Use the gap – use your brain. Don’t be told what to think. Think properly, so that you can be sure that what you think is right.