The title pretty much sums up my day. The group I had to lead went very well. All of the participants thanked me many times and told me what a great job I did. I explained what stress was to the group first and where stress in our lives can come from. There are four main sources of stress. They are the environment, social pressures, physiological, and YOUR own thoughts. Your own thoughts are really the ones that anyone has the most control over. It basically means that how you interpret certain stimuli determines whether it will be perceived as stressful to you. For example, you go into work and see your boss with a grimace on his/her face and they appear a bit out of sorts. If you see this and think immediately that, " Oh no, they are in a bad mood. I must have really messed something up this time. I know they are going to have something negative to say about me today." YOU have made that into a negative stressor for you. Your boss' facial expressions could be for a number of reason...They didn't sleep well due to illness, maybe they just got some personal bad news...none of those things has anything to so with you. If you had thought of it that way first, you would have prevented a moment of stress.
Next, I had the group write out and give an example to everyone of one thing that stresses them. Then we talked about how they currently cope with those stresses and I taught them about 3 positive and free ways to cope with the stress in their lives. The three coping tools were exercise, journaling/writing, and Negative thought stopping. You can read more about the last one here: Five R's of Negative Thought Stopping If you need more clarity on this or just want to talk more about it, feel free to contact me! I actually used this today. I was starting to think negative thoughts about myself and my personal life. As soon as I "recognized" the thought I said No out loud, took a deep breath, reframed the thought into something positive, and moved on. :) I also continued to smile and greet everyone...SO POSITIVE! It makes me feel good.
Tomorrow is Monday and Valentine's Day. I am going to be glad about the day instead of anti-V-day as I have been in the past. I will not wear all black tomorrow and I will continue to smile and greet everyone. I have a lot to smile about and I should start showing that on the outside.
Day 7 down...358 more to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment