Wellbeing Project 7 - No more stress

Success not Stress

Last weekend I found out just how far I had come on my journey of wellbeing and managing stress. Driving to deliver a training session, I realised I had forgotten my USB. 

Surprisingly calm, I called home to ask them to get it out of my trouser pocket from the previous day's outfit and email me the powerpoint I needed for day 3, only to be told it wasn't there. In the past I would have had a meltdown at this point, but instead I assumed I must have left it at the venue the previous day and drove on. When I arrived at the venue I couldn't find it either. Still no meltdown. Instead, I was able to focus on solving the problem of delivering the training rather than obsessing with the lost USB and becoming stressed. 

I couldn't find the USB that night or the next day either. Calmly and logically I looked everywhere and asked everyone who could have seen it. In the past, my self-talk in reaction to something going wrong would have been to call myself every name under the sun -  'idiot', 'loser' being two of the kinder ones. I would also have got into the blame game: it was everyone else's fault and having a go at them. It's not that I didn't consider that someone else had moved it, it's just that I didn't go into a negative mental tirade. 

I even managed not to have a complete hissy fit when I was asked 'haven't you backed it up?' - an unhelpful question that felt loaded with accusation. Backing up my USB was always on my important to-do list but never made it to important and urgent ...

I have been reflecting on how I managed to get to this place in the few weeks since my last blog on managing stress. The key difference was that I didn't seem to have to 'manage' the stress in this situation. It seems to me that everything I have been doing for the past six months to improve my wellbeing has finally come together. In addition, I wonder about the anchor I collapsed two weeks earlier and what effect it had on my reaction that weekend.

The joy of attending and running courses is that everyone gets to try all the techniques, and I got a client to practise the Collapsing an Anchor process on me. I wanted my anchor to slow drivers collapsed as I had spent years commuting 100 miles a day getting annoyed at drivers holding me up by doing 30 in a 60 speed limit in country lanes. For the last two weeks I had discovered the freedom of being free of that anger and free to drive more strategically or just to sing while I wait. 

What I have learned about NLP is that it has knock-on effects: when we change one thing in our life, it impacts on other areas. Perhaps collapsing that anchor was the final key to unlocking a stress-free approach to living, to being solutions-focussed when dealing with pressure.

I really don't want to lose my USB again to find out though!