Are you stressing over the implementation of your new strategies and action steps for 2020?
Change your Perception, Manage Your Stress!
Stress occurs when a person perceives that demands made on him or her exceed the personal and social resources he or she can utilize. The keyword here is ‘perception’. In reality, it is not the situation that is stressful rather the stress we experience is derived from our interpretation of the situation.
Stress is caused by the perception of an impending threat and there can be times when we’re wrong. Negative thinking, excessive harshness, and injustice to ourselves and others can intensify stress. All this very seriously undermines performance. First, the mental effort that is wasted worrying and fretting over a situation can be put to better use by focusing on our work. The capacity of our conscious mind is disrupted when negative thoughts compete with task-related thoughts – all this competition disrupts our thought-flow and causes mental strain on ourselves. Although eliminating worry and anxiety is unwise we should reschedule issues that might be plaguing our thoughts and postpone dwelling on them for later.
The emotional analysis is a method that helps you understand the emotions you and other people feel and identify the assumptions that lie beneath them. Once you’ve gained an understanding of these assumptions you can decide for yourself their accuracy and can either change your perception or take appropriate action.
Cognitive restructuring is another tool that is similar to emotional analysis, but it takes a more formal and intensive approach to understand the causalities of negative moods. This method is useful for looking objectively at negative thinking to help you remove unfair and unjust negative thinking that lowers self-confidence. It helps you take a clear, balanced look at the realities behind stressful events.
We need to clarify our interpretations and perceptions of stressful situations to limit the number of stressors that are competing for our attention. This way, we can focus our attention solely on tasks that require mental effort to increase productivity. Remember, Change your Perception, Manage Your Stress!
Thought for today: The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
Have an incredibly productive day.
BF
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