The Secret To Resolving Stress
Resolving stress is not as difficult as everyone seems to think. You just have to make a decision about the issue.
If you look back on any stressful time, you’ll find that it stopped being stressful at the point where you decided one way or another.
Maybe something happened that made your decision for you. Or maybe you got so fed up that you jumped off the fence.
But you’ll find that the failure to make a decision is what keeps stress stuck in the treadmill of your mind.
In the last step, we talked about how to gain clarity and perspective on the issue by examining it from every angle, with no questions off limits.
That’s important, because once you can see the issue in greater clarity with all the facts and subtle nuances laid out before you, the decisions are so much easier.
If you’ve ever made business decisions in an organisation where the management information is clearly given to you, you’ll recognise that mostly the facts make the decision for you.
Here’s another example. Everyone who’s dealt with money knows that if you spend more than you have, you’re going to run into trouble.
Yet, many, many people struggle with debt. Here in the U.K, last year debt levels reached £1.35 trillion or about $2.7 trillion. That is more than the Gross Domestic Product. which is the value of everything made and sold in that year.
Sometimes you will see tv shows about people who have gotten into dire trouble and then they meet with an Advisor. The first thing the Expert does is sit down and analyse the figures. In almost all cases, there’s nothing the Individual couldn’t do themselves, but they kept running and hiding from the issue.
It’s exactly the same with resolving other areas that cause stress. You just need the clarity to have all the different strands that make up the issue in front of you. That was covered in step 2.
The first part of deciding is to set your criteria. So you take all the questions you asked in step 2 and answer them individually.
Now you have the issue broken down into many small chunks, you decide where you stand on each chunk. These become your criteria.
Usually people struggle to make decisions because they are trying to make a huge decision without considering all the aspects and elements that make up the surface issue.
A small, start up business might ask the question, ’shall we advertise?’ But that’s thinking at too broad a level to gain any worthwhile answer.
A successful company will ask, ‘how shall we allocate our advertising budget to tv, radio, print and internet?’
A really successful company will know the return they’ll get for every place they advertise. So the decision is made for them to advertise and where. There only question is ‘how much can we invest before it stops being profitable?’
You aren’t having to make one huge decision, just lots of little ones. This is how you refine what exactly it is that you want.
Let me give you a simple example. I have a webcam hooked up to the computer to make these videos. Now my two Daughters have been having great fun videoing themselves singing, dancing and generally shouting and doing stupid things and then rewatching the clips.
Now they’re having a great time with it, but it’s very loud. So my wife and I are trying to talk, but we can’t hear ourselves. If it were just a one-off it would be fine, but it happens quite frequently and so it becomes an issue that causes stress.
The basis of the stress is that we are torn. On the one hand we want to be good parents, we want them to be free and be able to have fun. Yet we also want to be able to sit and have a cup of tea and talk over our day.
So the stress comes from wanting two seemingly contradictory things and not seeing the underlying conflict. Once we parcelled the chunks out and defined the real issue, our creativity could be unleashed and the problem resolved.
The webcam can easily be moved to my Daughter’s desk and laptop upstairs, where they can play about and downstairs doesn’t sound like a rock concert.
So for example, yes, I do want them to be able to have fun. No, I don’t want to live with constant shouting, screaming and fighting.
The best solution, therefore has to be one that matches up both needs, or as many as possible. Before you can identify the best solution though, you need to have identified your criteria. Answering the detailed questions gives you, your criteria. This is the first part of stage 3.
There’s no video yet, due to technical problems.
This all sound very confusing. Some issues are easy to identify the pro’s and Con’s why we want such and such or not want such and such.
Have you ever wanted to ask for something and were afraid to because we didn’t want to appear pushy.
I personally have hit on a snag of a problem and am confused as how to resolvd the issures.
Hi Rob,
From the very beginning of my “issue” people have been telling me to sit down, grab a pen and write. All the pro’s and con’s, to write about the issue and sit back and read it again in a few days. I have to admit that it’s the only thing i haven’t done yet. I keep thinking i have turned over every stone, gone to the bottom of every emotion involved, mulled over the facts but still the issue is unresolved. Maybe this is what i need to do to gain clarity. I like how you suggest learning what your criteria may be, what you will and wont settle for and what criteria would make you a happy person, i suppose i would work that bit out by writing it all down and showing myself. I will give it a go.
[...] started to reply to a comment on the last post and as usual it ended up as a sequel to War and Peace, so I decided it would be easier to make a [...]
Hi Ms Brown,
I started to reply, then ended up making it into a new post;
resolving stress follow up
If you still have questions either post a comment or email me.
Jill,
The key is that you don’t keep them on a treadmill going around in a circle, that just makes you more confused.
In the next steps we’ll use them as a springboard to come up with a resolution.
The step of breaking down the issue into smaller chunks and establishing criteria such that the decision is apparent is very logical and reliable..
something voice keeps telling me that we are missing something..
Two Points:
1. If we go with the arguement that stress is releived/reduced the moment a choice is made, then a logical consequence would be that a life without choices is inherently less stressful.. this i have observed in many cases where people accept the situation as it is..i know a lot of poor people in india who have to work for more than 12 hours in menial jobs to earn two dollars.. they are mentally at peace with themselves..
Are we better off without choice? without freedom?
Or is freedom a double edged sword? It has the potential to screw your happiness and also the potential to take you to greater heights…
2. I have some reservations with taking an issue and breaking it down into smaller chunks and setting criteria etc.. In my experience, there are lots of issues that trouble me for a while, i feel stressed for a while and i simply do not act on it..
If i use this strategy, it opens up two possible outcomes..
a. Over time (a day, week or month..) the issue becomes irrelevant or simply fades away..
b. The issue becomes more urgent and knocks for your attention..
In my experience, more than 75% of the issues simply fade away..In that case all that I need to do is to have a state of mind where I can simply not carry it in my head.. basically i should be able to live in peace inspite of some ambiguities and unresolved issues..
If we say take every issue and satrt working on it and take actions, then it simply leads to an unending chain of events.. the issues which would have faded away start getting energy (simply because we acted on it)..
I am afraid that in todays world where we are bombarded with so much of stimulli, analysing each issue and trying to resolve the underlying conflict might drive us crazy and we will probably be doing only that..
i do not want to runaway from issues, but I would like your genious to give us your thoughts on choosing a criteria on which issues that you would choose to tackle and which ones you would simply ignore…
my two cents
Hi rob,
I have two comments w.r.t to the fact that the stress is relieved when we make a decision one way or the other..
1. A logical conclusion would be “not having a choice is better than having one”..no decision is required and so no stress..
2. if we choose to break down every issue into smaller chunks and set criteria for them, then i feel we might be overwhelmed by this task..
I would like to hear from your genious your thoughts on how to set criteria on which issues to tackle and which ones to simply ignore..
In my experience, once we decide to act on a issue trying to resolve the underlying conflict, the very act of our thinking about it and acting on it adds fuel and energises the issue..”Don’t wake-up sleeping dogs”
I believe there is a book I came across which referred to the fact that too many choices made us less happy. Can’t remember any more than that though.
Yes. I do think not having a choice can lead to less stress.
However I think the ideal state is not in never being put in a stressful situation, which would only lead to boredom and stagnation, but in overcoming stress and using it as a springboard to a higher level of being.
Will you be overwhelmed by doing it with little chunks? Maybe. If you can deal with it one big chunk then do it in one big chunk.
But the idea behind the small chunks is that it makes a big decision more manageable. In most cases people are stuck on making a decision because there are many other things they know are involved in the decision, but they can’t think of them all at the same time. So making small decisions is easier.
It all depends on what works for you.
Stephen Hawking can calculate all his workings out in his head because that’s the way his brain has become structured. Most of his Peers need boards and papers to map out their thoughts. It just depends on what works for you.
Which issues to tackle? All of them. If they are on your mind, process them so they move from your mind to resolved and forgotten.
A sleeping dog is still there and can be woken at any moment by a loud noise. Your life is about dealing with stuff not avoiding it. What you don’t deal with today is the thing that will bite you in the bum tomorrow.
007,
One of your comments got marked as spam in the comment filter. So to answer some points not covered in my first answer and because I think they are good points to answer for everyone I’m going to make a post to share my thoughts.
[...] days I’ve been catching up and replying to some comments that were long overdue a reply. Here’s one that I felt was probably relevant to many people, so I’m making my reply into a post.007 [...]