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How to Handle Stress-Related Procrastination 85

Build Stress Buffers against Low Frustration Tolerance

Frustration-tolerance training can be counted among the most
powerful ways to reduce both stress and procrastination that is
associated with stress and that sets conditions for added stress.
Here are three broad directions:

1. Build your body to buffer pressures from multiple ongoing
frustrations. Ongoing stress increases the risk of disease,
fatigue, and mood disorders, and so building your body has
an added value in reducing these risks. Build this buffer
through regular exercise; a healthy diet; maintaining a
reasonable weight for your gender, height, and age; and
getting adequate sleep.
2. Liberate your mind from ongoing stress thinking. This includes
dealing with pessimistic and perfectionist thinking as well
as low-frustration-tolerance self-talk, such as telling yourself
something like, “I can’t take this; I have to have relief
right now.”
3. Change patterns that you associate with needless frustra-
tion, such as holding back on going after what you want,
avoiding contention at all costs, and inhibiting yourself
from engaging in the normal pursuits of happiness and
from actions to curb procrastination.

(For more information on frustration-tolerance development,
I’ve provided a free e-book. To access the book, visit http://www.
rebtnetwork.org/library/How_to_Conquer_Your_Frustrations.pdf.)

The Importance of Maintaining
Optimal Performance Tensions

Since stress is inevitable, why not accept this reality and figure out
how to make stress work for you? The Yerkes-Dodson curve shows