Empty the Basket - Stress Management

Empty the basket – Stress Management

I never quite mastered how to stay in the moment. For some of us who pride ourselves in multitasking, being in more than one place at a time becomes a common phenomenon. There is a tendency to overwork oneself without one knowing. We develop a high tolerance to stress. The next thing we know, we forget how to relax and the body forgets how to shut down and sleep.

A couple of years ago, I was buried in work and did not realize that it was way past closing time. A colleague called me from home to ask if I had seen the headlines and I said I was still at the office. He chuckled and said, you cannot expect to complete everything today Anita, there will still be more to be done tomorrow. I looked up from ‘my to do list’ and realized that I had accomplished what I needed to for the next 3 days. I smiled and told myself that it had been a good day so I would come in a bit later to the office the following day.  The next day I was at the office early the same time and I spent the rest of my morning going over the work I had done the night before to be sure that I had dotted all I’s and crossed all Ts. When that was completed, I passed by a colleague’s office who was swamped with work because she had just returned from vacation and offered to help her out before my meeting later that afternoon. The day pretty much went the same way as the previous days with me always having a lot to do and very little time to rest. Some people enjoy the fact that they have a high tolerance to stress as if it is a good thing. Truth is, the more tolerant you become to stress, the less likely it is that you will notice that you are stressed and will need to take a break and eventually what started as fatigue turns into something serious and on some occasions fatal.

None of this really registered until I found myself in a situation where I had overworked myself, I had lost a few pounds but I kept telling myself that I will rest when on vacation. However, I used the most part of my vacation to treat illness. Just when I was recuperating, I had to return to work. Then I realized that I was always making plans to rest and postponing pleasure. So what does this all mean? We spend the most part of our youth in grueling jobs having very little time for ourselves or for our families.

Stop! Listen! Will some of the things you are fretting about matter 10 years from now? Probably not. And hey, no one is indispensable too. If you drop dead, your employers will have a heartfelt tribute read at your wake and then the following day employ someone else to take your place. Life is short, cliché, I know. But you never realize just how short it is until you attend the funeral of your age mate and realize it could just have easily been you. Learn to take a break from work and things that stress you out.

Read a book, see a movie, call up an old friend, make it home on time to eat dinner with the family, take up swimming or exercise, pick up a new healthy habit, learn a new language (not French of course, that is a whole new kind of stress; just kidding) or like me, blog or learn a musical instrument. If you are someone like me who gets serious with everything please do not venture into learning an instrument, we do not want something which was meant to be fun turn out with you being more stressed because you could not play a tune in F key. But by all means do something for you. Find a way to relax and develop a low tolerance for stress. As much as you make a to do list for work or school, have a to do list for fun things you can do as well. Today I tried hopping on one leg in my living room. Silly I know but if you have had the night I had of not getting much sleep because I was warding off mosquitoes and still had to wake in time to fetch water before the power cut, you will do silly things too.

If you feel the need to critique this article, please take a pause and realize I am also de-stressing 😃😃. I would love to hear your views about your stressful moments and how you managed that stress.