Get the Control Back in Your Life

More often than not, we get stressed out when deadlines loom and the mountain of work seems to be getting higher. You may be surprised to hear this: it’s never about the amount of work per se; the stress comes from a feeling of having lost control. If you look back at the happiest time of your time, most likely you will find it was a time when you had autonomy in your life – a feeling that you have options and time to exercise those options. A good way to test if you have autonomy is to look at your calendar and see how much white space there is and ask, “What’s left for me?”

How does one get autonomy? Firstly, you must manage your time more effectively. Second, you have to learn skills that will help you work smarter. Finally, you must constantly protect space for yourself; to the point of being a little bit selfish and not giving all your time away.

Let’s start by putting first things first, as time management guru Stephen Covey advises. He has a wonderful analogy for effective time management which I have followed to this day, since his First Thing First book came out more than 10 years ago. Picture a big tank, which you want to fill up with big rocks, stones, pebbles, sand and water. For optimum efficiency, in what order would you put these in? Obviously, the big rocks first, followed by the smaller stones and pebbles, give it a little jiggle, then the sand and finally the water.

Well, in preparing your daily or weekly schedule, Covey stresses that the key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Decide first what are the priorities in your life – the most important ones are the big rocks you need to put into your schedule first, and not last, when the extra time comes around (they never do!). The best is to do a weekly or even monthly schedule so you can put all the various items in – let’s say, you block out your working hours, then fill up the white spaces with activities in order of priority in your life e.g. God, family, self (recreation), career, and so on.

Then do the same with your work hours, prioritise your tasks and duties first, then slot them in. Take into account things like when is your inner rhythm at its peak, so you can schedule the most taxing tasks which need full concentration.

Another tip from Covey is to put your tasks into four quadrants: Urgent and Important; Not Urgent but Important; Urgent but Not Important; and Not Urgent, Not Important. Very often, we get distracted by things which are urgent and screaming for our attention; but we have to be smart enough to turn away things which are not important. A case in point: we are busy with our work, and suddenly, a phone call comes to tell you your 20-year old niece has just arrived from Australia, can you fetch her please? The smart thing to do is to arrange for her to take a cab instead.

What we often put aside are things we should do – things that are not urgent but are important to our future e.g. taking time off to learn skills that can help us work smarter, or help us move up the corporate ladder, whatever your goal may be.

Well, if you are feeling stressed out, use this tool starting today and I assure you, you will soon regain control in your life. To borrow a phrase from Nike, just do it!

For more tips on how to manage stress effectively, click here.

Mindless Eating

I had a tearful evening watching the tear-jerker My Sister’s Keeper. I suppose it’s never easy watching your loved one die. It creates the eternal debate: Is it better to know when you are going to depart from this life, or simply go without knowing? Those who have watched the movie Bucket List (my favourite!) would probably say, “yes” to knowing; at least we can make our bucket list and do all the things we have always wanted to do before the final goodbye.

Anyway, what such movies do is to reinforce in me the passion to get more people to take full responsibility for their health. There is so much we can do to keep and stay healthy – all simple disciplines that we will even enjoy, once we make a decision to follow them. It’s just that most people are just too lazy to even think about them. They would rather remain ignorant, and as we know, if we had ever seen a sick person dying, or watched the movies I mentioned, ignorance is certainly not bliss.

Take good nutrition for example. Why not focus on taking more delicious foods that are good for us, and less (not total deprivation) foods that we know are not good for us?

The trouble is most of us are indulging in mindless eating and lifestyle habits; often we don’t even enjoy what we put into our mouths or know why we like to stuff ourselves with potato chips whenever we turn on the television. Or why we just automatically light up that cigarette that we know is poisoning our lungs? Or must drink that cup of coffee in the morning? If you really think about it, you will realize it was probably not about how you enjoyed the taste.

The first time you smoked, you probably choked. Similarly the first time you drank coffee, you probably didn’t really like it. This is our body reacting to what is really not good for it.

But the road to success is not ruthlessly cutting out all your habits, although that has worked for many, once they found their motivation. My mother quit smoking “cold turkey” after she was hospitalized for a stomach ulcer. My husband also quit immediately after a speaker at a seminar pointed out how distasteful it was for non-smoking business associates to breathe in the foul breath of a smoker.

You don’t have to go that road where food is concerned. As Dr Brian Wansink suggested in his book Mindless Eating, the key to change lies in middle. You can turn the food in your life from being a temptation or a regret to something you guiltlessly enjoy. You can move from mindless overeating to mindless better eating, says Dr Wansink.

For some tips on how you can do that, go to:http://complete-health-guide.com/free-health-ezine-7.html or write to me at coach@health-coach-international.com.