For Those Who Say, “Yes.”
May is the perfect month to talk about stress management, because on top of everything else, weddings and graduations and outdoor projects struggle to find a place in the mix of too many things to do. Am I right? A funny meme goes like this: Adulthood is saying, “After this week things are going to slow down,” for the rest of your life. I can relate to this. How about you? My personal quote goes like this: I always wanted to live a full life; I just didn’t know it would be this full. They mean the same thing. Is it wise? Is it healthy? How do we pump the brakes for a manageable workload? Or should we even try? The answer to that last question is, “Yes!”
Here’s the problem with a too-busy life. Stress is a hidden trigger beneath many chronic and life-threatening conditions. The early work of Hans Selye introduced the correlation between stress and disease. His work documents the link between increasing stress and decreasing well-being. Three distinct physiological changes result as stress builds. The adrenal cortex thickens, the thymus shrinks and portions of the duodenum ulcerate. These beginning stages stress adaptation are mild compared to later issues in heart function. Getting a handle on stress begins with words.
Most of what we do we must continue to do. Work never ends. Projects multiply. The propensity for a week to clump in too much in too short a time borders on calendar demonic possession. Given that we aren’t going to escape to a desert island, begin stress management by changing your verbiage. Harvard researchers suggest that excusing yourself from social or family obligations due to being slammed at work suggests we don’t prioritize or care about family. Everyone feels slammed, so choosing where to place time is a matter of personal priorities. When you excuse yourself because you are too busy, what another hears is, “I’m too busy for you.”
Instead, learn to say things like, “Here’s what I’m also doing that day,” or “Could I take a rain check?” Both open areas of dialogue. One says, “I really do value time with you.” You can also offer to help: “I can’t be there in person, but I’d love to Grub Hub lunch for the crew,” or “Could I send you my ideas via Messenger tonight?” Invariably, I default to the old fashioned, Just Say Yes pattern of schedule revision to include yet another obligation.
I don’t want to leave you feeling hopeless about stress management, however. My dear old and sainted mum had a solution to help keep stress at manageable levels. She worked for the FAA and approved travel reimbursement vouchers. It took a small team of ladies to allocate funds and files for requests tended to pile up on desks with resulting pressure. My mum won a contest for submitting this suggestion: Build the piles somewhere else, and let each auditor get a new file when the current file is done. It lowered pressure and increased productivity and she earned $5. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but it was sixty years ago. The principle holds true. Start a list and only worry about the next thing on your list. Your list isn’t going to get ulcers or lose sleep over too much to do, so deposit all worry in this safe space.
The bottom line is simple: Reduce stress. The rest of this month will focus on related issues and hacks for doing something about it. For right now, let’s leave it at this. Stress is bad. Reduce stress.