Making
A Stress Management Plan
So far in this section, we have looked
at the Schedule
of Recent Experience, Stress
Diaries and Stress
SWOT.
In this article, we use the self-knowledge
you have gained with these techniques to
think about how you can manage stress. By
making a stress management plan, you can
focus your attention on the most serious
sources of stress in your life, so that
you can work on bringing these under control.
Introducing Your Stress Management Plan
The diagram below shows the stages of the
stress management planning process:
We looked at the first stage of this process
in our articles on the Schedule
of Recent Experience, Stress
Diaries and Stress
SWOT. If you have used the tools we
discussed, you should already have a good
idea of the most important sources of stress
in your life.
List and Prioritize the
Sources of Stress In Your Life
The next step is to prioritize these sources
of stress so that you can separate the important
stressors that must be dealt with from the
minor, infrequent irritations that do not
need as much attention.
Start by writing down a list of the sources
of stress that you identified with the Schedule
of Recent Experience. To this list, add
the most frequent and serious sources of
stress you identified with your Stress Diary.
Finally, add the weaknesses and threats
you identified with Stress SWOT.
Review this consolidated list and redraft
it in order with the most important things
at the top. The items at the top of the
list should be the most important for you
to resolve, while the ones at the bottom
of the list can wait until you have the
time to deal with them.
Tip:
If you create this list using a spreadsheet,
it will be much easier to sort the
list into the correct order without
a lot of tedious redrafting.
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Once you have done this, the next step
is to think about how to deal with each
source of stress.
Work out How to Target Each
Source of Stress
A good way of doing this is to work through
the most important stressors on your list
one-by-one. For each source of stress, work
through the Stress
Key. This will help you find the techniques
that are most relevant.
Also, think about what you learned about
yourself when you used Stress SWOT Analysis.
As part of this, you may have identified
people or resources that can help you in
managing stress – co-workers, friends,
mentors, team members or many other people,
or additional resource. Make sure that you
make appropriate use of all of the help,
skills and resources that you have access
to. Also, make a note of the skills that
you need to acquire to manage stress effectively.
And then think through for yourself whether
these are the most effective techniques
or skills to use, or whether others may
be more appropriate.
Bringing This Together:
Your Stress Management Plan
Then, based on this, write down what you
are going to do to manage each of the important
sources of stress that you have identified.
This is your Stress Management Plan.
As you create your plan, make sure that
you do not over-stretch yourself: The last
thing you want is to get stressed-out by
failing to meet the timetable of your stress
management plan!
Next, make entries into your diary reminding
you to review your plan, and keep it fresh
in your mind.
With your plan, you should now have a good
idea of what you have to do to manage the
stress in your life. All you now have to
do is implement this plan!
The next
article helps you deal with the stress
of work overload...
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