Reducing Stress In Life By Doing What You Really Love

A Practical Technique To Minimize Stress

~~Guest Article by Jeanine Maningo

Reducing Stress: Living A Balanced Life

Photo: hevonens

You might have read the book, “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that says adults "concerns only with matters of consequences". This is the cause of stress.

Compare an adult life with a life of a child; the child enjoys so much of the time playing and you will not see a sign of stress in them. But as an adult, life can be miserable with so many tasks to do and responsibilities to tackle that anyone can forget that life is still wonderful to live.

So how can you go about reducing stress by maintaining a good balance in life so as not to get overwhelmed with stress?

1. List down all the things that you love for which you do not have time to do it. Just do not worry about "not having enough time to enjoy". The key is to list down all of these activities that bring you joy, relaxation and comfort.

   For example, you love to do cycling, running or doing physical exercises but you do not have time to do it. Or it will just be as simple as gardening, painting, singing, watching movies etc. Think like a child as they appreciate simple things in life.

2. The next thing you should do after you list down all of those things is to examine your daily tasks realistically. This is where you adopt the 80-20 rule. This rule states that, only 20% of your daily activity tasks are responsible for 80% of the positive results you are expecting.

The big mistake of being an adult is to get all things done without really examining if it is was really worth the time. Now, you need to list down all of these tasks in a piece of paper. These tasks are your daily activities. To assess the overall value of the tasks, you need to rate them according to:

1. Necessity: Give it a score of 1 if you can live without that task. Give it a score of 3 if your family, your finances and your job are paralyzed the moment you stop working on it. Example of high necessity task is your 9-5 day job.

2. Contribution to long term financial goal: Give it a score of 1 if that task will not provide monetary gain in the future. Give it a score of 3 if you are sure you will reap big profits from it. A good example of these tasks is managing your daily finances and doing some investing activities.

Reducing Stress By Focusing On 'Really Important'

Now multiply the score of these two factors to get a rating of that activity. For example:

1. My 9-5 day job: 3 x 3 = 9
2. Hanging out with friends at the bar: 1 x 1 = 1
3. Fetching children from school: 3 x 1 = 3
4. Checking my finances and investments: 2 x 3 = 6
5. Watching daily news: 1 x 1 = 1
6. Daily shopping: 1 x 1 = 1
7. Daily work overtime: 1 x 2 = 2
8. Surfing the net: 1 x 1=1

Total score is 24. Taking the percentages (arranging from highest to lowest):

1. My 9-5 day job: 9/ 24 = 37.5%
2. Checking my finances and investments: 6/24 = 25%
3. Fetching children from school: 3/24 = 12.5%
4. Daily work overtime: 2/24 = 8.2%
5. Hanging out with friends at the bar: 1/24 = 4.2%
6. Watching daily news: 1/24 = 4.2%
7. Daily shopping: 1/24 = 4.2%
8. Surfing the net: 1/24 = 4.2%

The cumulative score of your day job, checking your investments/finances, fetching children and some overtime is = 37.5% + 25% +12.5% + 8.2% = 83.2%

Doing just these four activities provides you 80% of the results. You need to focus ONLY on these tasks. The rest can be ignored.

Evaluate free hours to enjoy, remember that in the first step you are listing down the things that you love. So, for example:

1. My 9-5 day job: 8 hours work
2. Checking my finances and investments: 2 hours work
3. Fetching children from school: 1 hour
4. Daily work overtime: 1 hour

Total number of hours doing important activities: 12 hours. So if you sleep 7- 8 hours, still have 3 to 4 hours per day to enjoy the things that you love. For example, if you love gardening; doing at least 3 hours a day can significantly remove stress. Another example is that you love to watch movies with your wife/husband and kids, and then you have 3 quality hours a day to enjoy from it.

This is an effective technique for reducing stress because your mind and body will be refreshed if you are doing a non-stressful activity.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Jeanine Maningo is an independent musician and singer from Cebu Philippines. She used to write articles about success, inspiration and motivation based on her personal experiences in life. You can read her blog about tips on attaining success and happiness in life.

She also blogs about music and focusing on how to become an effective singer

Further Reading

Coping With Stress With a Positive Attitude

Deep Breathing For Stress Relief

Five Main Causes Of Stress

Handling Stress Of Change: Coping With Life's Big Changes

How Does Stress Affect a Person....How It Affects You?

How To Deal With Stress Naturally

How to Relieve Stress When You Are Overwhelmed

Meditation: Stress Relief Through Awareness

Nine Steps To Overcoming Anxiety: An Action Plan

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