I came across this article by Business Management expert Dick Chilton last week and thought it would be good to share with you.
A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?”
Answers called out ranged from 500 grams to 750 grams.
The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter.
It depends on how long yo...u try to hold it.
If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem.
If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm.
If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance.”
He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on".
As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.
As simple as it is, this article is appropriate to each and every one of us. We either have now, have had in the past, or will in the future experience very near debilitating stress. We all try to “hold the glass of water” up too long, never finding time to put it down for a rest.
As a matter of fact, sometimes we aren’t even aware of how long we have been holding the same “glass” up. We don’t realize how the stress is wearing us down until eventually, it starts to erode our daily quality of life a little at a time. We either “don’t know what we don’t know” or we simply refuse to put the “glass” down because we may feel guilty about not finishing some really critical, has-to-be-done-right-now-or-the-world-will-end project.
I believe the first step to “putting the glass down” is to start “draining the swamp.” What’s step one? Yes, you guessed it, the old reliable “Brain Dump.” Write everything you are currently doing down on a piece of paper, and put them into 3 categories:
1. Top 3 = tasks that are time-sensitive or need to be done to complete other tasks on your list.
2. Easy 3 = tasks that can be done quickly to help you gain momentum If you are not feeling motivated.
3. Next 3 = The next tasks you can complete to get on top of things.
You will get further faster by following this simple process than any other process that I know of.
If you will just do this one simple thing you will be a giant step closer to "putting the glass down" and getting control of the stress and your life.
Yours in health,
Dirk