How Journaling Helped Me Overcome Daily Stresses!
I had a dream….A beautiful woodpecker… a mosaic of colours at the dusk of dawn swoops down and rests on a soft, silky smooth surface.
It lines up its beak and finds its exact location. It was beautiful watching this creature slowly knock away and then suddenly the speed increased…. Faster, faster, faster… the speed was getting out of control… the dream was becoming a nightmare.
The woodpecker had venomous eyes, fuelled with rage, shaking its head left to right, right to left!
Battering away in my ear hole…
Forcing its big nose into my cranium…
Eatings its way into my mind…
Then chewing on the remains of my brain…
This wasn’t a nightmare. This is a reality. A reality I face EVERY DAY. 365 DAYS A YEAR.
The wood pecker is my 6.30am alarm clock and it ruins me. But it doesn’t ruin me because I need an extra 10 minutes sleep..
Its ruins me because as soon as that alarm goes I’m stressed.
Why do we hit the snooze button? Its never to get more sleep… it’s to off set the following:
The Stress of the Day-ahead, the Week ahead.. Your life ahead.
Stress at What to Eat for Breakfast? Anxious that it needs to be a ‘Smoothie Bowl, covered in Almonds’? Stressed it needs to have protein in it. Stressed I need to Instagram. Stressed I need to sput the perfect filter on it.
Stressed at your ‘To do list’(which ironically is meant to de-stress you)
I am a very stressy person.
If someone cuts me up on the road… I feel like Armageddon has come and ruined my day… Why Me? WHY WHY WHY its so unfair.
I’ll get stressed that my Coffee is TOO hot… “Why are you so hot? It's unfair?” Neglecting the fact, that, by nature it is a hot beverage.
I’ll get stressed when I’m at the end of my toothpaste… trying with all my might to squeeze the paste outout… genuinely believing that my toothpaste is possessed my some rabid Demon, going out of its way to make my day crap. trying to make my day awful.
I’ll get stressed about getting stressed… ‘Don’t get stressed… Why are you getting stressed? No need to be stressed BRO… AHHHH I’m stressed’.
Once we come to terms that stress is part of human nature it becomes ok…
No. I am not a science guy or a biologist BUT here’s a Pope version of history and stress.
Cavemen
Caveman… they used to wake up. Stressed.
What to eat? How am I going to hunt for dinner? What if I don’t feed the kids?
‘Ahh FOR-GODS-SAKE I gotta go hunting for fish in that ice cold pond with Jimbob who also stinks of crap… then I get back to my cave that also reeks of crap, Fantastic’.
Cavemen were stressed.
The Feudal System (Kings and Jousting Shit)
Yeh ok they didn’t have phones, iPads or even Social Media… they didn’t even have to be in a factory… they were free to roam the land.
BUT…they were stressed that the King was going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed and slit their ball sack open with a hot iron rod.
The farmers were stressed that their crop would be a pile of tripe. Everyone was pretty damn stressed with the ol’ religion side of things. Heaven or Hell? or in today’s terms British Airways or Ryanair?
Henry VIII was stressed.. he owned all the land, played tennis, ate like a gluttonous pig, shagged who he wanted … but even then he was stressing about having a boy, he was so stressed that he decided to cut off the heads off of his wives.
The Factory workers
They would wake up every day stressed about achieving the American Dream.
They would stress over ‘Keeping up with the Jones’’- ohhhh they’ve got a nice car… we need to get one of them. Stress. Stress. Stress.
Our generation
We are never going to escape stress. Once we accept we are always going to be stressed- we actually relax.
I know I am never going to wake up stress-free. So I prepare for that wave of stress.
As soon as I wake up …I DON’T WRITE A TO-DO LIST. BECAUSE THAT WILL STRESS ME OUT.
What I do instead… is tap into what is stressing me out at that EXACT MINUTE.
It usually only three or four things… BUT these three or four things feel like a hurricane swirling around in my brain.
So I write down the things that are actually stressing me out at the very moment.
By writing it down… the stress is removed from your brain and you’ve stopped the hurricane.
You’ve actually spelled out the ingredients of your hurricane and you realise its never that bad…your brain is just racing, racing.
Everyday I know as soon as that rancid peacock gets into my boat.
So I was stressed about these things….
- I procrastinated all morning (I wrote this at 8.30am, but I start work at 6am every day- so felt like the whole morning)
- Angry went out two nights on the weekend and fucked up my gym routine (trying to lose weight)
- Anxious I had no idea what I’m doing with Juice It (new job, little direction, trying to do everything on my ones)
- Anxious I won’t be able to speak to people and look like a mug (scared I didn’t know enough about Juice It and would look like a moron)
Then here are the action steps:
- Do three things towards Juice It. Try a Wagamama juice and create a market research plan. I did these things, stress went down and I had a good day.
- Don’t stress about what is not in your control. What’s done is done, go out there and do the workout. For hours I was lying in bed thinking ‘I’ve messed up’, I had cheated all weekend, KFC, Chocolate Cake, had been out both Friday and Saturday Night, felt tired. This was completely out of my control, I can’t change the past, its over, so I made sure I smashed out a workout.
- Create a Plan, Remember Richard (my boss) is on the end of the phone- when your mind is in a stress Hurricane often easy to forget some simple things, i.e. people are THERE TO HELP.
- Meditate after you work out- Meditation helps me chill the fuck out and realise that looking like a mug in front of people about a product I am unsure on, is literally just me playing over a scenario in my head again and again. Meditate is fucking works.
What should you do?
As soon as you wake up… write down what is actually stressing you out at that minute.
- It’s usually three to four things.
- Then draw a line after your list of stressful things.
- Number each one.
- Then write down next to each number an action step that would help reduce that stress and make sure you have a good day.
- Rip up the piece of paper- do the things on your list- hey presto stress reduced.
Sounds simple. It is and it works. What should you do?
I hope this helps.
Share my content and help other people feel more relaxed as they combat their day today.
