Stop Pulling Your Hair Out!!

Lesson #1

Quincy here. I thought for my first lesson entry I would talk about something that affects everybody on a daily basis, stress. Stress is your body's response to any stimulus. Any type of stress triggers physiological responses: your adrenaline output increases, your heart pumps faster, and your breathing rate goes up. These bodily responses are positive if you channel them over a short period of time, but if there is no release, however small, then stress becomes a negative force. The strain of negative stress manifests such symptoms as: chronic fatigue, headaches, a change in eating habits, inability to concentrate, general irritability, as well as other physical problems.

A certain amount of stress, however, is beneficial. An experiment conducted in 1908 by Yerkes and Dodson studied the effects of stress on learning in lab animals. Those subjected in laboratory animals. Those subjected to extreme stress or no stress learned less than those subjected to moderate levels of stress. In 1983 a similar study was performed by Bossing and Rouff using children in a classroom environment. The 1983 study confirmed the results of the earlier experiment by Yerkes and Dodson.

There are many invaluable techniques to manage and reduce your stress level. I will be sharing more of these techniques in the weeks and month’s to come but I wanted to share with you one of my personal favourite techniques. I find that this is the perfect way to set aside stress so that you can enjoy both your time away from the office and your time at the office.

CLEARING YOUR MIND OF THE DAY'S EVENTS
"Clearing" is a technique which will help you to leave the personal/work activities behind you so that you may relax when you return home or reach the office. On a daily basis, you may experience situations which were not completed, and the clearing technique allows you to complete them both mentally and emotionally. Once a situation has been completed, you can put it behind you and put your attention more constructively to other areas of your life.

The Clearing Technique
To assist you in mastering this technique, create a daily clearing worksheet with three columns across the top of the page. Title the first column, "Incomplete Events, Problems and Thoughts of My Day". Title the second column, "My Next Step", and the third column, "Cleared".

1. Follow these steps to use the worksheet:
   Before you start/ leave work, relax and review your day.
   In the first column (Incomplete Events, Problems and Thoughts of My Day), list the events of your day which are still in your mind, both pleasant and unpleasant, and things which were not finished i.e. unvoiced thoughts, undone tasks.
2. Review your list and place a capital C in the third column (Cleared) beside events which were completed to your satisfaction. Let these items go from your mind.
3. In the second column (My Next Step), write down beside each uncompleted item what you can do to rectify the situation.
4. Once you have made your plans, visualize letting these uncompleted items go from your mind until it is time to deal with them.
5. To fully use the clearing technique, spend no more than 10 minutes on your worksheet each day.

Practice this technique for a week, until you get into the habit of letting things go at the end of the day. Letting things go doesn't mean that you are going to ignore them, it means you will deal with them in the proper time and the proper place. As you become familiar with the clearing technique you can use it throughout the day in the various situations which you encounter. For instance, once you are satisfied that a situation, such as a conversation is completed and nothing remains to be said, you will be able to go onto the next event with a clear mind. Gradually, as you get better at this technique, your evening worksheet will only contain completed items. You will be better able to relax, as you will be free of unfinished business and won't have to worry about it. Q