How to Stop Stress Before It Takes Control Of Your Thoughts

I was in the middle of writing this week’s article when something happened that changed my direction…..

A situation occurred that required some serious stress managing & I felt I needed to share a critical LifeTool I used!

First, let me tell you about the situation:

I did a stress management workshop 3 days ago at the NJALA state conference. It went GREAT! I felt honored to be there with them.

The stress situation came up today, when I went to work on a project & couldn’t find my USB drive. Suddenly, I realized the last time I had it in my hands….at the workshop 3 days ago!

As I felt the blood rush through my head, my 1st thought was, “Oh my God, what am I going to do?”. My 2nd thought was “I can’t believe I did that, how stupid.” Tears started to come to my eyes when I thought about all the work I had on that drive…. presentations, manuscripts, articles, even some pictures. I started to get mad – at myself – for violating my rule of safely traveling with the drives all together in their case & not making a back up.

Then I caught myself.

The ‘old me’ would have just kept on fueling those thoughts & actually making myself physically sick. I used to get ‘stress migraines’.

Instead, I reached for one of the most powerful tools I have – this sentence:
“It could be worse…. (Then you identify the way it could be worse) The more the better!

Here’s what mine were:
“It could be worse, I could have lost all 3 drives.”
“It could be worse, I could have had to start completely from scratch.”

While this tool doesn’t eliminate stress completely – it does help get your brain turned around, heading in a more positive direction, & not fueling the stress!

~ Take Control Of Stress ~