Less Stress in My Life

In my first post, I mentioned that I have begun to take a hard look at my life and where I want to improve. Based on this time of deep self-reflection, I created a list simply titled "What do I Want?" :

• Less Stress in My Life

• Quality Improvement in my hobbies/passions

• Better focus on long-term health and wellness

• To be the best possible husband and father I can be

• To have strong, meaningful friendships

• Have the freedom to do what I want, when I want

• Continuously build upon my existing knowledge

• Improve my daily productivity

In this post, I’ll be discussing the first and perhaps the most difficult - having less stress in my life.

Embrace the Discomfort

From my experience, stress manifests itself differently to everyone - for many people, the decisions made due to stress and the consequences of those decisions can have more of a negative impact than that thing that was causing the stress in the first place. For me, stress tends to manifest itself as a 'silent enabler' - attempting to make me believe the poor decisions I make will have no consequence :

• Difficulty Sleeping

• Poor eating decisions ( I tend to hit starches and desserts when I’m feeling stressed )

• Emotionally shutting out the people I can about the most, in some pathetic attempt to ‘protect them’ from what I’m dealing with

• My attention span becomes very short, and I tend to lose focus easily

As I began to peel back the layers of how stress manifests itself in my life, I started to dive deeper into the cause(s) of that stress. The time spent was uncomfortable, to say the least. From my experience, if this internal analysis is done correctly you will feel very exposed and raw. You may find, like I did, that you have to take a break from it and come back later when you're energy reserves are built back up a bit. I say all of this not to discourage you from the process, but to prepare you and encourage you to embrace the discomfort; I firmly believe the end result will be worth it. 

While the original list was much longer, I was able to boil down the essence of the multiple items recorded into three primary sources :

• Financial Concerns

• Procrastination

• Long-Term Physical Capabilities

On a personal note, I find it somewhat humorous that I mentioned 'procrastination' being one of my primary sources of stress and in the same article suggesting you 'step away for a bit' while completing your list of stressors. The irony isn't lost on me…

Remember the Moronic Things…

For the sake of not boring you to death, I'll spend the rest of this post discussing the first item from my primary sources : finances.

I have always found money management stressful, and to be bluntly honest I'm not sure I can tell you why ( may have to a deep dive on that in a future post ). When my wife and I were dating many years ago, we would spent every moment together that we could and it was my DUTY to pay for everything we did. She never expected me to, and constantly offered to help but I always insisted - as the man in the relationship it was my job to cover the bill. I look back on those days and remember the MORONIC things I did to have cash in my pocket for date night, events we were going on; my personal favorite is taking out cash advances against a credit card I had no business having so that I could pay for dinner and a movie. As the years moved along and we became parents, there would be times when money would be tight. Instead of being more forthright about the situation at hand, I would continue to make the same dumb decisions like putting something on a credit card that either could have waited or just not been done at all.

Recently we hit a period of less than optimal decisions over the last few years had culminated into a situation where a slightly important need had come up, and there wasn't enough money on hand to resolve it. I fell into some of my usual habits of not sleeping and hitting desserts pretty hard. As you can imagine, the cascading effect of lack of sleep and blood sugar levels that look like a roller coaster began to impact not only the quality of my work but also my interactions with my family - especially my wife. An innocent question about a upcoming family member's birthday gift or something related to the house would be met with curt responses that I'm not necessarily proud of; thankfully for me, at the same time I had begun the internal work of understanding some of the sources of my stress and the awareness of how big of a stressor money is for me. As these things began to reveal themselves, the first conversation I had was with my wife - to not only apologize for my behavior, but to explain some of my discoveries and how I want to address them going forward. For me, this meant being more upfront about how things actually are instead of just 'dealing with it' or 'making it work' - it also meant taking a really hard look at where we're spending our money and what can improved, changed or removed completely from the equation. I expect this work to be ongoing for the years to come, but it also had the unintended effect of bringing us closer because we were partners again

Write It Down

For me, the only way to have this breakthrough was to sit down and make the list. I would encourage you to do the same : make a list of EVERYTHING that gives you any level of stress - it doesn't matter how small or how large it is. Write it down.

Once you've completed the list, go back through each item you've written down and do some hard analysis - you may begin to notice relationships between many of the items you've written down. Once you've done that, you may be able to boil them all down to 3-5 ( or more, or even less ) key points that you can begin to attack. I would also encourage you to not go at this alone - make sure you bring your significant other along with you. If you're single, go to your tribe for advice and feedback. If you're still working on building your tribe, talk to a professional - depending on what your ultimate list items are, it may require talking to a financial planner, or a physical trainer or even a mental health professional. They can help you begin or refine your plan of attack.

I will add a slightly biased final piece of advice : every step forward, even the creation of the list, is a victory. Keep each step in your attack plan small and measurable -  a completed item on your checklist can be a huge motivator as you continue on the path. Keeping your steps measurable allows you to provide specifics at each phase, so you can further track your success.

No excuses, Noble Alpha - keep moving forward.