I have a dear friend who will be off on a five week European adventure soon. When I saw her yesterday, her eyes were crossed and her vibe was "fried" as she relayed how stressful it was coordinating all the transportation schedules and accommodations. (Mercury is in retrograde until July 20th and I'm sure that isn't helping.) She's not alone in feeling stressed these days, so it's a good theme for this newsletter.

             One of my projects this week was to correlate the data of 1000 people who took the Attitude Reconstruction quick questionnaire on my website recently. (Click here if you want to take the survey.) The results show the magnitude of fear, aka, stress (such as too much to do, not enough time, and I feel the pressure) in our lives today.

STRESS BUSTERS
Here's the short list of what to do to dissolve "stress"

1.  Shiver. It works. While shivering only think and say
     "It's okay." or "Everything will be all right."
2.  Don't entertain thoughts about everything at once.
3.  Make a list of what needs to be done and attend to
     one thing at a time.
4.  Delegate where possible.
5.  Breathe. Take a few minutes here and there to step back
     and refresh yourself.
6. Keep interrupting the inner critic and offer yourself
     appreciations. I'm doing the best I can.

Recently I had the pleasure of seeing Gail, a midlevel manager at a big tech company. She was so pleased with herself because she had successfully shifted her driving habits. She used to be perpetually upset on the road, ranting and going on the offense against all the incompetent and dangerous drivers. With a simple shift of awareness and attitude, she realized that she was not going to be able to change how people drive. They were the way they were, and her job was to drive safely and have a pleasant time getting from point A to B.

By this simple tweak from out there to herself, and from judgment to acceptance, she finally relaxed. Now, each time she is on the road she views herself as a defensive driver and assigns herself the task of gracefully figuring out how she can be safe in her car and have a fun ride.

Gail then started to talk about her work situation and confessed that she judged the people who weren't using the resources that her team had so diligently provided. She found she responded to their requests in less than loving ways. I made the suggestion that she make work like driving so it too could become stress free. Gail jumped on the bandwagon and said her new work goal was going to be to make every interaction and request pleasant. This meant that she would be kind and take a minute before responding and find something helpful to say.

In order to make every exchange fun, she would no longer think "Oh crap" but tell herself "Oh boy, this is exactly my job and I'm excited to figure out a good solution to this problem." In interacting with her bosses, staff, and while doing her job description, Gail's new motto became "Fun. Thank you."