Decreasing your worry and breaking out of a negative stress
cycle isn't easy. You'll need a structure for dealing with stress as it occurs.
Consider the following four-step approach:
- Step 1: Stop. As soon as you begin to feel stress coming on, say
"Stop!" to yourself. For example, your computer freezes just as
you're trying to finish your presentation, and you feel that rush of
anxiety with failure messages flooding into your mind: "The
presentation will fail; I'll fail; I'll be fired." Block those
messages before they can be heard by saying, "Stop!" Repeat the
message two more times: "Stop!" "Stop!"
- Step 2: Breathe. The next step is to breathe. Take a deep breath,
filling your diaphragm with air. Hold that breath for eight seconds, and
then slowly let the air out. Just as the word "stop" blocks the
negative thoughts from your mind, breathing overcomes the stress tendency
to hold your breath when under stress. Focusing on breathing helps you to
focus on your stress in a different way.
- Step 3: Reflect. By interrupting the pattern of stress and giving
yourself energy through breathing, you can now focus on the real problem,
the cause of the stress. By reflecting on your stress response, you can
begin to distinguish the different levels of thought and to sort out
rational from irrational stress responses. You can see the practical
situation more calmly and realistically and distinguish it from the
distortions of your anxiety-influenced thoughts.
- Step 4: Choose. Finally, with your attention now on the practical
problem itself, you can choose to find real solutions. For example, after
rebooting your computer you may discover that very little material was
lost, or that even without the lost material, you'll still be able to get
the information across to your audience using the old-fashioned method of
talking it through. What might have seemed a disaster becomes a manageable
problem that you were given the power to solve by identifying your
options.
Find yourself stuck in a negative stress cycle? Use this
four-step approach to break free.
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