Beat the stress!

It will be worthwhile to run your mind what causes your stress and how a change in the way you handle situations can help combat your stress

By Ashok Subramanian

In today’s fast paced world, we all get stressed in one way or the other and that affects the way we respond to others.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a way of understanding the way we think and behave so that we can run the mind ourselves instead of giving in to habits and regretting the results.
Sometimes, a good exercise is to sit quietly and ask out loud a simple question: HOW DO I STRESS MYSELF?

• Time: Do I spend most of my time focusing on the past/present/future?
  
  
• Attitude: Do I have a problem-centric or a solution-centric attitude in dealing with people/events/tasks in my life?
  
• Perfection: Do I focus too much into the details or do I have an overall view of things, so that I know how much I can spend my time on fine tuning the details?
  
• Living for self or others: How much of what I do in my life is because of my choices or other’s choices that I have given in to?
  
• Emotions: Do I know when and how much to get associated with an event, people or environment around?

Now you will have an understanding about the “know-how” behind your stress.

For example:
If your current combination for creating stress is “Thinking about the failures in the past along with bottling up all your emotions” (let me code this in the following way: Past + Problem centric + Non-emotion = Your Stress) then you can try out a different combination like “Thinking about the possibilities in the present assuming that everything will be ok and sharing your feelings about this with someone close to you” (Present + Solution Centric + Emotional release).

It will be worthwhile to run your mind by this new formula and reflect on what difference the new formula is having on your stress level and to be able to figure out which choices work for you and which one’s don’t can be a very good learning curve!