Spoonful of Positive: Stress Management

There are many ways to think about stress and how to manage it. The "kitchen stove" analogy is one I often use to talk about stress management:

All your life stressors are represented by dishes you're in the process of preparing on a multi-burner stove. Your dishes are unique to you. Maybe you're trying to finish a degree. Get a career going. Start a family. Manage a chronic health issue. They are all sizzling or bubbling away in pots and pans.

You're the chef. You're in charge of all of these dishes…the ones that you've started, anyway. It's hot in the kitchen. That's stress.

The only time you don't have stress is when all the burners are off. Stress isn't a bad thing. Stress lets us know we are alive and provides us with motivation, challenging us to learn, grow, and create. Managing stress so that it can be a positive factor in our lives, allowing us to make all the things in our kitchen, is the goal.

So how do you manage the heat?

Possible stress management solutions:

Check out:
If the heat gets to be too much, you can check out. You can drink, drug, or numb yourself in some other way until you're no longer worrying about all the dishes you're responsible for turning out. But if you step away from your kitchen with no one to cover for you, everything eventually boils over, burns, and becomes ruined. When you return (because hopefully you'll return) you'll have one hell of a mess to deal with. It's true that you can reduce stress by checking out. You just can't effectively manage stress.

2. Take care of yourself:

You can step away from the kitchen, without coming back to a burnt mess. Taking care of yourself is like having an equally capable chef step in and manage everything. When you return to your kitchen, you can continue your work without a hitch. No mess to clean up. Nothing ruined in your absence. Self-care includes practicing healthy thinking and problem-solving, establishing and automating healthy lifestyle habits, learning how to prioritize, and nurturing what matters. If you don't know how to take care of yourself well yet, you can learn. It's a set of skills that anyone can eventually master.

3. Ask an expert:

You can bring in a master chef to consult with you about how to set up your kitchen to make it more efficient, show you how to calibrate your burners, and share hacks to help make the challenge manageable. Life is difficult. Get a mentor. Talk with someone who knows what you're trying to achieve in your life and who's been there. Get help from a good therapist. Seeking advice and support from others to manage stress is, in itself, a stress-reducing experience.

You may also enjoy this answer about work-life balance by Mayo Oshin (How do I find work-life balance?) Mayo argues that it is unrealistic to achieve a successful balance of family, friends, health, and work. I'm not sure I completely agree, but there's some food for thought there. 

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