Monday Motivation: Be Good to Yourself
Feeling stressed out lately? If so, you’re not alone. It seems to be the zeitgeist, and no surprise, given current economic conditions.
Over at Business Pundit, Drea recently wrote about the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, which is:
a psychological scale that predicts how likely you are to get sick based on certain life events.
This scale, originally designed in the 1960’s, produced an aha! moment for me. Several years ago, I experienced a number of life changes in a single month: Losing my job, closing on a home, moving, starting a new business. After the storm settled, I found my health trashed, and couldn’t figure out why. Now that I’ve seen the scale below, I realize that I was edging on 300, practically a guarantee of illness.
She goes on to point out how many of the items on the list correlate with a recession, and it’s eye-opening.
Then, over at Drew’s Marketing Minute, guest contributor MJ Ryan points out some jarring news about the same scale:
The folks who created that list in the sixties estimate that life is 44% more stressful now than it was 50 years ago, and they came up with that estimate before the 2008 global meltdown. I’m not sure we even want to know the new number!
Life is stressful for many of us, and many of us are surrounded by friends and family who may have it even tougher. Of course, watching people we care about struggle is stressful too. And if you haven’t been laid off, there’s a good chance you’re carrying an extra workload from the folks who’ve been let go in your organization. AND you’re still probably not 100% confident that you’re not going to lose your job.
All of this anxiety and pressure can make us feel like we simply MUST get it all done. And yet, with so much on our plates, it’s more likely than ever that we won’t.
Now is a good time to take a deep breath — go ahead, I’ll wait — and let your shoulders drop. Go into this new week with a calm confidence that you will do what you can do, and you will do it well, but you cannot do more than you can do. Allow yourself little kindnesses, like a walk outdoors, or a piece of chocolate after lunch, or whatever it is that makes you smile.
All that relaxation might even make you more productive.
Happy Monday!
