the encouragement lounge: Stress management tip from a guest blogger -- my dad!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Stress management tip from a guest blogger -- my dad!

Last night my dad emailed me to say he has been reading my blog and wanted to offer a stress management tip.... so here it is:

The following has helped me through stress and problems at work and in life in general. When faced with a problem instead of worrying about the entire problem I divide (either mentally or on paper) it into two parts.

One part consists of everything in that issue that I can change and the other part is the part I cannot control. Then when I am sure I have the list complete I throw away all the issues that I CANNOT change and only concentrate on what I can change. Why waste time, energy and worry on something you can not change?

This has saved me a lot of unnecessary worry and stress and has allowed me to sleep at night. I learned this from a "stress management course for supervisors" and believe me it works.

Thanks Dad! Good luck with the work, all!

photo by HLS

3 comments:

AnonymousSeptember 16, 2009 at 10:59 AM
Great tip - this is why dads are so handy to have around! ~Melanie
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Dancing With FeySeptember 16, 2009 at 4:21 PM
I like your dad's idea.

It reminds me of a prayer I used to say every night before going to sleep:

"God grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

I would continue to say it nightly, except that I'm a polytheist now and I'm not sure who to address this particular prayer to. lol So I guess that's one downside to polytheism.

But maybe the prayer will help someone else. :)
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AnonymousSeptember 23, 2009 at 9:02 AM
Hi Harriet's Dad-

Great advice. I believe taking the time to write things down can help broaden your visualization. One may realize that they can change more than they originally thought possible.
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Working adult students, on my mind...

I hope this blog will be helpful to friends and others involved in a variety of endeavors. However, I created the blog with students in mind and continue to develop it with that specific group as my focus.

I believe that with the increase in evening, weekend, and low-residency programs, students are working more and more in isolation. If we were all full-time students on campus, we would have the informal support that comes with being able to go down the hall and talk with a colleague, etc. But instead, we are working late nights and weekends at home in front of the laptop.

With that in mind, I hope the encouragement lounge provides brief moments of respite and energizing connection. This does not at all replace valuable face-to-face contact. Many aspects of the academic journey can only be addressed via in-depth conversations with colleagues and teachers. And I would always rather sit down and talk with someone than to communicate online. Nonetheless, my aim is to give you one more channel for quick hits of support.