The Real Secret Behind Stress

Are You Settling For The Wrong Kind of Pressure? Would you like to know the real secret of “stress” relief? Turning Bad Pressure into Good Pressure.

Bad Pressure: Stress placed on you by other people that drains you with worry.

Good Pressure: Stress put on you by yourself that gives you something to aspire to.
Focusing on the 30 things people expect you to get done today tends to drain you. It’s called overwhelmed. It’s too much and it feels out of your control.

Focusing on getting the task in front of you done in 25 minutes instead of 30? It’s a race against yourself, a chance for you to prove how kickass you are that will make your focus muscles stronger.

If you don’t like the pressure you’re under, rewrite the rules for how you’re positioning it to yourself. 
Don’t let other people do the positioning – reframe it in your head to put some spin on it that makes the pressure work for you rather than the other way around.

Don't kid yourself that it is about productivity, or organisation, or “peak performance.” 
It’s about feeling good about yourself, shedding some stress and focusing on becoming a more capable person, because that’s something that makes the next 30 minutes easier to deal with.

Do this: Take something you’re stressing about doing and find a way to break it down into smaller tasks you can devote overwhelming short-term focus (10-20 minutes) to. It’s only 10 minutes. Close the office door (pretend you’re on a call if you have to).

Just take 10 or 20 minutes, tell the world to disappear, because instead of stressing about the crushing pressure of the Overwhelming Task, you’re going to focus on the “good” pressure of proving yourself – even if it’s only for 10 minutes.

Do it now. It feels damned good.

Then do it again, and again, and again.
And when all these 10 minute chunks are compiles you have overwhelmed the task and not vice versa.

Don’t settle for external pressure that crushes you when you can leverage some internal pressure that drives you to rock your universe instead.

Get to it.

That is all –

David