The first and most important step to less stress!

Start in the right end and make your efforts effective.

If you suffer from overwhelm and stress and pressure it might be hard to know where to begin to get out of it. Being in the hamster wheel it is very hard to see anything at all. You just do whatever come before your eyes and keep on moving without an effective plan. This is very common. Things get out of hand and too many keep on moving until they hit the “wall” – get depressed.

You maybe believe it is a health issue because you start feeling sick. But you usually don’t need a medical doctor, even though it may be nice to also be assured that it is not so bad with your physical health – at this point.

What you need is a few hours with yourself taking a good and honest look at your whole situation.

The first step to a healthier and more stress-free life is always to look at where you are right now, This “look at what you got” principle is the same whatever you want to change. You always have to find the starting point. Otherwise you don’t know what direction you want to go.

One way is to use the tool “Wheel of Life”. It can be set up in many ways. I usually use 8 pieces:

Work

Money

Network

Intimacy

Personal development

Free time

Health

Physical Surrounding

You list what you want to change from each area and sort your list and put them in order of importance. Always write it down, the human brain has not capacity to keep too many things active at the same time. Not writing it down means you are going to forget and loose good thoughts.

Once down on paper you look at that list – you can see clearly what you need to take care of – maybe you don’t know how to do it but you at least know what you need to ask for help about.

Here comes the toughest part – action and implementation of whatever needs to be changed. This is the big stumbling block. You are running too fast and that makes it hard to make changes. Today’s tip is – get help! From your spouse, neighbor, friends, boss, colleagues, whoever or get a mentor to help you. You will need an accountability partner to lead you through.

It is time to roll up your sleeves and get started!

Have you ever had that frightening feeling of being totally out of control? How did you handle that? What is your best tip to avoid getting there? And tips of what to do if you get there? Please write your comments below.

In my book “Take stress from chaos to calm” you can read more about the Wheel of Life, how to use it and how all this is connected and you will get a model to bring the best out of yourself. Click here and read more about it and get your own copy.

To your success – and keep smiling!