I am not dealing well with demands from wherever they come.
Someone asks me, “Can I have five minutes?” and my immediate thought is, “No I have enough to do already.” It is not necessarily the most helpful thought towards someone’s requesting my help.
I am aware when I see a call from certain people I am immediately thinking, “What will they be wanting?” and with the thought comes a stress train.
Often it isn’t a demand but often it is.
It is time for me to Google and see how many others are searching for help in dealing better with demands. The article below is yielded from such a search.
There are some key quotes,
“How well you react to and manage daily stressors impacts your relationships with other people, with yourself, and how others perceive you.”
Justin Menkes, a consultant at Spencer Stuart and the author of Better Under Pressure says it’s critical “to get a handle on your reaction to the stressful things that happen to you in the moment.”
Sounds like I am not alone so how do I get a handle on my reaction?
I am more frequently telling myself, “Don’t waste energy fuming use it to get on with what needs doing.”
I also read something recently that says set 3 priorities for the day and do them. It seems 3 are too little yet as I experimented with it I noticed that although other tasks still come in if I remain focussed on the 3 I keep returning to them. It is as if the day generates its own tasks but if you remain steadfast with your 3 and not allow the day or whoever else distract you, by the end of the day they may be done.
Identifying that you will not get something done on time unless you drop something else is another good tip. I have never been particularly good at this as I always want to do what is set. I have come to realise there is usually always more set than hours to do so I need to say and say before the deadline.
Hey, Knight in her article understands as having just written my own thoughts in the last paragraph she writes,
Or, if you are faced with an unrealistic request, tell yourself: “I am going to calm down before I go back and tell my manager that completing this assignment in this amount of time is not possible.”
Have I been naive to think that no one would set more tasks than time allows?
The article reminds me of the role self-talk plays in managing stress. Recently I have reminded myself that I have done certain pieces of work before and got them done.
If I am regularly doing something I am usually fine it is those tasks I only do once in a while that sometimes cause me concern. Part of that is because I don’t regularly do them and forget particular stages of the process.
I see this when I have to access a website that I don’t frequently use. For me, there are too many sites requiring different user names and passwords complicated further by some not permitting exclamations marks or the like. I remember one only to then remember when I informed, “Incorrect password” that this site doesn’t allow you to use @ or you have to use a number instead of characters. I find I have to get it wrong to get it right. The brain somehow has remembered the process of getting there in the end but only by making the previous same mistakes.
I found just reading the following quote from the article below affirming in a world that at times wants to make you feel you are the problem,
Feeling stressed? Of course you are. You have too much on your plate, deadlines are looming, people are counting on you, and to top it all off, you still have holiday shopping to do. You are under a lot of pressure — so much that at times, you suspect the quality of your work suffers for it. This is life in the modern workplace. It is more or less impossible to be any kind of professional these days and not experience frequent bouts of intense stress. The difference between those who are successful and those who aren’t is not whether or not you suffer from stress, but how you deal with it when you do.
The final article features Bill Rielly 5 points to reduce stress,
I was encouraged in reading it that over the years I have developed some of the practices he speaks of, meditating, deep breathing, the ones I need to develop are, whatever I am doing give it my full attention and to question whether a thought is true. The question that comes to mind is that one that says, “Everyone else is coping so why aren’t you” of course no matter how many times it comes it is in my experience an untruth yet somehow and by some people, it persists.
Best, g
