Recognise that feeling when you have too many things going on, too many tasks or too many people wanting something from you? Well, I do. It took me a while to realise that ending up in a situation like this, was all my own doing instead of my old thinking: ‘why is this happening to me”.
I also started to recognise that my personality would take a direction towards stress-land and people reacting to me like “hey take it easy man!”. So, not a good place to be in and here’s what I now do whenever I recognize my emotions going south.
It sounds simple, but I literally visualise pressing my emotional pause button to take myself away from whatever stresses me out: a discussion that is going nowhere; saying “yes I will do that for you” too often, or planning 100 things to do in the weekend. By pausing, I talk to myself in the 3rd person and ask myself..” how important is this really Jos?”. Yes, causing a cure for cancer is important and serious business, but that’s not what I am doing here.
By exercising this and taking a distance from situations like this, you create a better perspective to prioritise what is really important right now. You will laugh at yourself and as a bonus, you’ll produce that smile on your face…and that is contagious!
Final thought:
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
– Oscar Wilde