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Turn Insight Into Action: ProactiveChange.com/stress |
Stress program: Press the "Reset" button |
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In this article, I will briefly describe a way to deal with moments of feeling stressed or overwhelmed. I am putting special emphasis on the word "briefly": this is not a detailed "how-to" article, neither is it a scientific study of what happens at such moments. It is a way to share with you an image, a way of seeing these situations, so that you can quickly "get it" and experiment with it. I am drawing an analogy with what happens with electronic appliances -- let's say, computers -- when their circuits are overloaded. Most of us have had the experience of a computer that starts behaving erratically. Often, a simple solution is all it takes to address the problem: you turn off the computer, wait a minute or so, and turn it back on. I'm not sure about the physics of it, but what seems to happen is that the circuits are "purged" from whatever static electricity was trapped inside, and the computer is "reset" to function normally. So my suggestion is that you keep this image in mind when you go through a moment when you feel stressed or overwhelmed. Think of it as your circuits being temporarily overloaded with some sort of static energy. While you are in the middle of it, your capacity to deal with the situation is impaired -- the same way as a computer in a state of overload is not able to compute properly. What this analogy suggests is that you cannot solve the stress/overwhelm problem within the stressed/overwhelmed mind; you first need to "reset" it. If this were a scientific paper, I would have to give you some "proof" of what I am talking about. But, here, my goal is not "scientific truth". I am simply giving you a hypothesis that you can play with, so that you can determine for yourself whether or not it works for you. If this where a "how-to" article, I would now give you detailed steps showing how you can "reset" your mind at such times. But such is not my goal here. I would like to enlist your imagination and creativity in solving this problem, so that whatever "solution" you come up with is one that you are personally invested in. At this point, I would assume that your reaction as a reader would fall somewhere between two poles. On one end of the spectrum, your reaction could be something like: "This is strange. Maybe exciting, maybe promising, but certainly something I have never done. I really don't have any idea how to proceed further". On the other end of the spectrum, you might think: "This is so old news. I do it all the time", and you would then be tempted to move along without pursuing this further. I would like to make suggestions for both cases. If your reaction is that this is something new that you have no idea how to handle, I would like to invite you to take a moment to think about it in a different way. Ask yourself: “What could I try that would help me ‘reset’? Now, let’s assume that nothing comes up. Then, instead of focusing on what is new and different in this approach, I am inviting you to focus on what might feel a little more familiar. For instance, is it easier to visualize a "reset button" if you think of the Staples commercials that feature on "Easy" button? Or: does thinking in terms of a "time out" instead of a "reset button" make the suggestion easier to relate to? If your reaction is that this is old news, I am inviting you to dig deeper. Think about times when you have used your "reset button". Ask yourself whether you always do it the same way, or whether you have been using different ways to "reset". Are there ways that work better than others? Are there situations when this works better than others? Can you come up with some hypotheses of other ways to "reset"? |
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