A few months ago, I posted a tip about creating an “Allergy List” (http://tinyurl.com/allergylist1), which focuses on knowing what triggers your massive stress! A personal example I talked about was having a ‘to-do list’ with “62” things on it!
Now, of course it is not as easy as to just avoid anything that drives your stress to new heights…but knowing your triggers…or your allergies, is the first step.
What is the next step? Yes, doing something about it!
Clearly I can not avoid a long to do list (as I reference in that previous posting) but by knowing with 100% certainty when my list gets a bit too long, it will, turn me into a mad woman, I can think about ways to avoid some unnecessary stress. So how do we do this? I mean, I still am going to have to balance work, home, cleaning, laundry, family parties, relationships, school activities, volunteer responsibilities….
For me, knowing my triggers, says that I am able to make more proactive decisions that will help mitigate my stress. For example, knowing what my priorities for the week ahead, helps me to say no, when more opportunities to rob me of my time, arise. When my to do list is already at maximum capacity, I have no problem saying “no” mid week to something else…because I KNOW that, this will inevitably trigger my allergy, turning into mad woman with an over loaded to do list.
Another example, when my husband was gone for 6 straight days, 4 times in the past 18months, I quickly found out, that when he was gone for a week, I would NOT commit to cooking dinner, bathing kids and getting them in bed every night that week, all by myself. So, knowing this was one of my ‘allergies’…I would proactively decide which was the most important priority. Some days, the kids got a home cooked meal and went to bed a bit dirtier than others. Some nights, it was fast food or leftovers for dinner and they would go to bed sparkling clean!
Knowing my ‘allergy’ to cooking dinner, bathing both kids and doing bedtime routines ALONE for a week, helped me to make a proactive decision that helped me to lower my stress those weeks.
If you haven’t yet, read the original post on creating your Allergy List, http://tinyurl.com/allergylist1 , and see what type of proactive decisions you can make this week to help mitigate some of your stress!
