How to Reduce Stress & Be More Successful – Reflect and Then Put Your Mind into Gear
Our minds are constantly active. While that sounds great and has served me well professionally for many years, it can also lead to undue stress and restless nights spent bouncing from topic to topic while taxing our bodies, minds, and energy.
For me, my active mind leads to a constant influx of thoughts in positive arenas such as new service ideas that can deliver value to clients or marketing campaigns that will help increase awareness of The Savage Leader in the marketplace. But there is also the torrent of not so productive thoughts like all of the “shoulds” and “what ifs” that fracture my focus, slow my forward momentum, and take my eye off the ball of what matters most.
What if we could take all of those thoughts, ideas, and emotions and use them in a productive manner in a way that reduces stress, boosts productivity, and accelerates progress toward our goals? Consider the analogy of putting a car, or more specifically an engine into first gear as a way of translating the swirl of thoughts into productive action. Revving our engines and “red lining” while in neutral at the stop light may sound cool, but it’s really just wasting gas while we stay in place. Try putting your mind into first gear by using the following techniques.
How to Reduce Stress and Be More Productive - 5 Tips
HOW TO REDUCE STRESS TIP #1: MEDITATE
Meditation offers many benefits including greater focus, being present, and even a health and wellness bonus. Meditation also helps dial-down unproductive thoughts while increasing focus on what matters; our personal purpose or mission, goals we seek to achieve, and how we want to show up for our team and the people in our lives. If you don’t already, introduce a 10-minute meditation (Try the Calm or Headspace app) into your regular routine to make sure you are spending time on the thoughts and ideas that matter and dial-down the unproductive thoughts. Meditation helps you separate the wheat from the chaff and to focus on what matters most while eliminating the noise associated with unproductive thoughts.
HOW TO REDUCE STRESS TIP #2: JOURNAL
Journaling is another tool I use to take the thoughts that spin my head and put them down on paper or into a digital notebook. Doing so takes the tornado of thoughts and organize them into thoughtful work streams and identify actions I can take to “put them into gear” and move forward. Journaling also helps me put out the mental trash that gets lodged in my mind and prevents positive, forward action. Not every morning journaling session is filled with breakthrough ideas. In fact, many are at least partially spent spewing out toxic-filled self-limiting beliefs and doubts that pop up, especially when embarking on something new. Journaling to organize your ideas while eliminating the negative thoughts will help reduce stress and be more productive.
HOW TO REDUCE STRESS TIP #3: CROSS IT OFF THE LIST
Another powerful exercise to reduce stress and create forward progress is around eliminating tolerations. Tolerations are those thoughts, people, tasks, todos, and other unproductive things that we tolerate in our lives and careers. Examples include putting up with a bad boss, being overlooked for a promotion, being habitually late to meetings, or even little annoyances like the dripping faucet in your bathroom. Take 30 minutes and write down all of the things you are tolerating in your personal and professional life. Then, identify three tolerations you will eliminate immediately (Tip: Pick a few easy, quick wins). Also, identify three additional tolerations you will eliminate at a later date (be sure to write down an actual date). Finally, make a commitment to eliminate those tolerations and share them with friends, family, and colleagues to ensure you are accountable.
HOW TO REDUCE STRESS TIP #4: IDENTIFY A GAP TO CLOSE
Our minds our often weighed down by negative thoughts tinged with self-limiting beliefs. While many of those beliefs are without merit, there are other thoughts that warrant our attention. Thoughts such as “I’m not ready” or “I don’t have enough experience” could point to actual gaps you need to close. For those that are rooted in reality, identify new skills to build, knowledge to obtain, behaviors to adopt, and experiences to gain. Then commit to closing those gaps by signing-up for an online course, reading a new book over the weekend, reaching out to a mentor or expert in your network, or hiring an executive coach.
HOW TO REDUCE STRESS TIP #5: BUILD A PLAN AND PAIR IT WITH ACTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY
The most clear-cut path to take action on those thoughts ruminating in our heads is to build a plan that implements those thoughts and ideas. Doing so will usually require you to apply the methods described above to create focus, eliminate the negative thoughts, and close the gaps needed to successfully execute your new plan. As you build your plan, be sure to commit to action and share your commitments with a trusted colleague or friend to ensure you follow through.
NEXT STEPS
Our active minds are our biggest asset, but can become a liability if we let them spin needlessly. Putting our minds into gear offers multiple benefits including lower stress, greater productivity, more success, and greater joy in our lives.
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