Stamp Out Stress, part one: getting rid of the niggles

Don't wait for someone to rescue you from stress, take a stand!

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re really busy, so the little things start to slip. You forgo the healthy packed lunch in favour of a packet of crisps and a coffee (extra shot). You dump your clothes on the back of a chair at the end of the day rather than putting them away. You let the paperwork or the dishes pile up.

This all takes its toll – your energy levels bottom out, you don’t have anything to wear and the phone bill doesn’t get paid – which starts to stress you out. As a result, in the small windows of time you do have free, you feel even less like sorting out the niggly jobs than usual.

So you watch TV instead, trying to make yourself feel better – you deserve it, don’t you, after all that hard work – and things slip even further. A cycle of stress has begun. Repeat as many times as you like, and before long you’ve got yourself in a right pickle. It happens to me all the time.

When you get into a cycle like this, there’s only one thing for it. Put those big important projects on hold for a moment – an hour, a day, whatever it takes – and sort out the slippages. Tidy your study. Make those phone calls. Get to the shops and restock the fridge with fruit and veg.

When you resume real life you’ll find that it runs more smoothly. That’s what I’m going to be doing today, and I challenge you to do the same.

I know, I know, you don’t want to – you’re busy, and when you finish work/studying/whatever you’re supposed to be doing you’ll want nothing more than to lie on the sofa with a glass of wine and something unchallenging on the telly, like reruns of Friends.

But this is false pleasure. Like a sugar high it will only bottom out and leave you nowhere in the end. Tackling those little jobs will leave you feeling lighter inside, and more able to cope with everything else. Try it, I guarantee it will work.

Happy organising folks!

PS This is the first in what I’m hoping will be a short series of blog posts about stress and how to deal with it. I’m no life coach but I’ve had my fair share of stress over the years, and somehow learned not to let it impact too much. If there’s a stressful situation you’re dealing with and want my “expert through experience” advice on, just drop me a line.