How To Reduce Your Stress In Minutes

I want to talk about stress today.

Wouldn’t it be nice to go through the whole day and not worry about stress at all, or to not be stressed and not feel overwhelmed?

Well, that usually doesn’t happen, does it.

We have to worry about all the things that we have going on and coming at us and all the things that we have to do.

• What do I have to buy the grocery store?
• What do I need to get for dinner?
• What do I need to do for my spouse so that I can be there for them?
• What about my children and what do they need?  What are their needs? Are they in high school at different ages where I have to do this, this and that. And who do I have to drive somewhere? Where and how am I gonna get that done?
• And there’s more kids than I have drivers. And how am I gonna do carpools?
• And do you have a couple of kids in college and what are their needs and what and how can I be there for them?
• All of these different aspects. And I didn’t even include work.
• All of things I need to do for work with deadlines and what do I have to do.
• Traffic and how am I going to get to work on time…
• and on and on and on and on.

And it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed.

So what I want to give you is my tool to help reduce your stress and stop you from being overwhelmed in just minutes.

Stress affects us every day in every aspect of our lives.   

• It affects you.
• It affects your spouse or your partner.
• It affects your friends, your colleagues at work.
• It affects every aspect of your life.

And it limits you from being your best self.

A recent study show that 80% of us are feeling stressed with the recent challenges that we’ve all been through, especially the last two or three years. It’s amazing what we’ve all been through.

55% of people surveyed said that they feel stress on a daily basis. And 57% of people responded that they feel that stress makes them feel paralyzed at times.

So what do we do about all this stress and what do we do about feeling overwhelmed?

Well, the reality of the situation is that your stress does not come from the actual events of the day or the traumatic events that you think that the stress comes from.

The stress comes from your thoughts and your beliefs about those events.

So what we really have to focus on is our mindset and how we see these events during our day and what our thoughts and beliefs are and how we can reset our mindset to have a more positive, proactive mindset.

This allows you to reframe your thoughts about the events of your day and to get more organized in your mindset.

So what I want to do today is to give you the tool that I created for myself.

I said, “what do I do for myself  when I feel stressed and overwhelmed, and I put this into what I call…

The 4M Mindset Method

I’ve been using it with my clients as well, and it works wonderfully and it can help you reduce your stress in minutes.

So now you can do this in your head as you get better at it but I suggest that you write it down with pen and paper.

The first M is: …

Make “The” Choice.

Now, it’s not “make A choice”, make a choice is, I’ll take a latte or I’ll have fries with that. Or, you know, I’ll take super premium instead of regular gas. That’s make a choice.

Make “The” Choice is …

to recognize that you’re in a stress situation that you feel overwhelmed and you are going to focus on your mindset and do the work that it takes to break that cycle and to focus on having a positive, constructive mindset.

Now, the second M is:…

Make a list

and it’s not actually “make A list.”

It’s make three lists.

Now this is the fun part.

The first list I want you to make is make a list of all the things that you have to do now up to 48 hours from now.

All the things that you’re stressed about and all the things that you feel like you have to do and feel overwhelmed with.

What do I do now? What do I do then? And you get the paralysis of analysis.  So you do nothing and you feel overwhelmed.

Take the list of those activities and say, okay, what do I have to do now, right now, in this hour!

What do I have to do today?

And what do I have to do tomorrow?

And that will start to compartmentalize the list that you feel overwhelmed with and tell you when you need to do it.

Now, the second list:

is what can you push off to 72 hours up to a week.

This will allow you to say, “okay, I can now push these activities that are stressing me out, further out because they don’t need to be done this minute.

And it starts to organize your mind.

The third list and this is my favorite list is to make a list of all of the things that you feel stressed about and that you have no control over.

And what I want you to do is when you make this list of all the things that you have no control over,…

Take each item and cross it out with your pen. Cross out the next one and give yourself permission to let go of those things that you have no control over. It’s extremely satisfying.

Now the third M is…

Make a plan.

This is where you set your goals and your plans and strategies for how you are going to accomplish the tasks that are on your list that you feel that were overwhelming you.

And as you start to do this on paper, you actually start to feel your stress go down, because you’re organizing your thoughts and you’re organizing your day and you’re organizing your week.

And you’ll see how the list just will push out to the next week. And you continue to work each day as it comes.

And the fourth M is…

Make a schedule.

Now some would say, if it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t exist.

This is when you actually schedule the time to complete the tasks and the activities that it’s going to take to check the things off your list.

So remember,

• The first “M” is
• Make The Choice that you’re going to break this cycle.
• Two is make the three lists.  What do I need to do from now to 48 hours.  What do I need to do from 72 hours to a week.  And the list of things that I have no control over that I’m going to cross out.
• The third M is make a plan and …
• The fourth M is make a schedule

By doing this, you’re helping to reset your mindset, which will decrease the stress and the overwhelmed feeling that you have.  To help to organize your thoughts that you have and to plan as you go through your day, your week and your month.

And you’ll see that the weekly list just keeps pushing out and pushing out and you just take care of it each day as it comes.

And you’ll see that within minutes of doing this in fact, while you’re doing it,  that you’ll feel your stress levels go down and you’ll feel less and less overwhelmed and more and more relaxed because you realize that now you’re in control.

Now, as you get better with this, you’ll start to be able to do it in your head. And you’ll say, okay, take a deep breath. Let me make the choice to change my mindset. What are the things I have no control over? What do I need to do right now? What do I need to do today? And how do I schedule the time to make sure that I can do these things? 

Well, I hope this information helped you out.

Have a wonderful Week!

Be Positive, Be Motivated, Be Focused and Be Well,

When you sign up to receive his blog updates via email.