STOP STRESSING! As if telling someone this actually helps. Here’s a universal law. What you focus on grows. It defines your attitude, beliefs and negative assumptions around what you perceive to be true and how you think, without the facts to support it. How do you best manage stress? Live in the present and stop going back to the future.
Stress is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous. Stress is your body’s reaction to a challenge or demand. It’s how we react when we feel under pressure or threatened. It usually happens when we are in a situation that we don’t feel we can manage or control.
When we experience stress, it can be, for example when you have lots of responsibilities that you are struggling to manage and believe it can’t all get done.
Focusing on what you don’t want stimulates the stress, worry and fear, which will then influence and shape your actions, behavior and ultimately, create the outcome you didn’t want.
While you may not be able to stop the feeling of stress, the solution is to learn how to best manage it. Instead of running away from stress or trying to avoid it run towards it so you can identify it and get through it. Here are 13 questions to (self)-coach stress and shift your focus from assumptions, fear and scarcity to facts, positivity, pleasure, and what you want to create most, not what you don’t.
1. Can you share with me what “stress” means to you?
2. If you can rewrite a definition of stress that’s more empowering and positive, what would it sound like?
3. What worries are at the top of your list?
4. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Let’s walk through this scenario together.
5. How is this stress or fear impacting you/your life?
6. What’s the best-case scenario?
7. What would a stress-free life look like?
8. What assumptions, if any, are you making about what you’re stressing over?
9. Is this something that IS happening or COULD happen?
10. Rather than focus on what you don’t want to happen, what can you do to create what you want to happen?
11. What makes you happy?
12. How can you shift your thinking from experiencing stress to experiencing inner-peace and happiness?
13. What process can you put in place the next time you feel/experience stress so you can manage it and use as your ally to shift your focus to where you want to be?
