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Balancing Your Life 231

The first of four important steps in dealing with stress is to be much
clearer about what you are stressed about. Once you have generated
a list of these try the following:

1 Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper, creating two
halves. Label the left-hand side “Worries” and the right-hand side
“What I could do.” Write all your worries on the left and think of
all the things you could do to help overcome them. At this stage, do
not get diverted into thinking about how you might improve mat-
ters. This is a recipe for confused thinking and subsequent inaction.
Focus instead on what you could do. List even those things you
think you have tried already.

2 Pick out the three most important worries you have and label them
1, 2, or 3 in another color.

You now have the beginnings of some more detailed self-analysis,
rather than the generalized sense of stress that can be so damaging
to us all. The next stage is to select one of your top three worries
and generate some positive actions for it:

3 Focus on each of your main three worries in turn. Still concentrat-
ing on what you might do not how you might do it, for each one
agree with yourself one thing that you are going to do. Say it to
yourself in the privacy of your head. Then, sleep on your ideas and
say them to yourself again on the next day. As you gain in confi-
dence with these tentative ideas, start to tell other people what you
are going to do.

4 Now, start to think about how you are going to implement some of
the things you have thought of. Use some of the creative thinking
techniques in Chapter 9 to help you.

As well as focusing on your own needs, there are some simple things
you can do in the workplace to minimize the negative effects of stress
on you, your mind, and the minds of your colleagues. How much you
can do personally may depend to some extent on your seniority.