Give yourself a break…

February 12, 2024

The Best of Jack’s Winning Words 2/12/24 – Originally sent April 21, 2015.


“You know you’re really stressed when you start getting on your own nerves.” (Sent by NCD) Each year my insurance provider asks for a health assessment, including a part which asks me to rate my stress level. I’ve read that some stress is good for all of us. As with much of life–All things in moderation! But, when nerves get you down, take some deep breaths, write a thank you note, go for a walk, make a gratitude list, and don’t forget to pray. 😉  Jack   


 
Most of us stress ourselves by being to critical and unforgiving of ourselves. We are obviously the only ones who can really answer the question, “What was he/she thinking?” and sometimes we just don’t like the answer. In fact, many people deflect blame from themselves by seeking someone or something else to blame for the bad outcome of what was a bad decision. Give yourself a break.

Sometimes we exacerbate the stress by imposing artificial and unrealistic deadlines upon ourselves. Sometimes we commit to achieving success in a task for which we are ill prepared to tackle (if prepared at all). Sometimes we commit to a goal that can only be achieved by a team of people and watch in disgust or despair when teammates let us down by failing in their part of the task. Almost always we look back on a failure and ask ourselves what we could have done differently to change the outcome.  Give yourself a break.

I saw recently in a report that some companies are starting to evaluate the performance of their employees based upon their success with the process rather than the outcome. That is important because it acknowledges that most bigger jobs (tasks) are comprised of multiple steps (the process) that are defined by others and that success at the macro-level is out of the control of the individual performing the detailed steps.  This allows a team-sport athlete who “left it all on the field” to feel good about themselves even in the face of a team defeat. Give yourself a break.

I have posted here a few times about forgiving yourself and that is a big part of giving yourself a break. The road to despair is paved with “what if” and “I should have…” guilt trips. Don’t go there. You didn’t and that is that. Forgive yourself and move on. Give yourself a break.

I like this quote – “The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.” — Thomas S. Monson

We can’t just forget the past or change it, but we can use it as a teaching moment and hopefully learn from it. We also cannot change the future, but we can get ourselves better prepared for it by developing and practicing a better decision-making process. That process begins in the here and now. Give yourself a break.

Becoming more conscious of how you make decisions will hopefully enable you to improve that process. Sometimes that decision-making awareness will expose many of the bad assumptions or prejudices that drive your decisions and behavior. Make correcting those a priority but forgive yourself for having them and move on. Give yourself a break.

Jack’s last suggestion that you can relieve stress through prayer is an important one. Prayer allows you to forgive yourself and free you to move on. Prayer allows you to admit that you do not and cannot have the answers to every challenge. It allows you to lean on your faith and upon God for those answers. I use my little prayer, “Not my will, but Thy will be done” to Give myself a break. Try it, It might work for you, too. Give yourself a break.

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Posted by Norm Werner

For fast relief…

August 4, 2014

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”  (Lily Tomlin) – as seen on the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin is a Detroit-born American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960s, when she began a career as a stand-up comedian and became a featured performer on television’s Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. She went on to appears in many movies and on several TV shows. For a person as busy as Lily was and is still, I suspect that the insight that she shared in today’s quote was important to maintaining her balance in life.

It is obvious to all that we live in a much faster-paced world today than existed just a couple of decades ago. We are ubiquitously “connected” almost all of the time and for some that constant since of urgency to react and respond has only added to the pace. For many our need to service our devices seems to have taken over life. The constant need to share the information “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” has actually become more important to some than the reality of where reading newspaperthey are and what they are supposed to be doing (and with whom).

Many older means of communication or information sharing, like letter writing or reading a newspaper have been supplanted by faster, electronic versions, many of them summarized down to a sound bite or a paragraph or two. The music industry was turned on its ear by the rise of music file sharing on our devices, with the result that release and sales of traditional albums is almost dead. Sales of physical musical products, like CDs, have plummeted and many performers eschew agents and recording deals altogether and release their songs directly to the public on-line. All of these things have added to the sense of urgency and speed in put everyday lives and caused us all to become a little overwhelmed by the perceived need to keep up.

I’ve written before about one little respite that I find helps me and that is slowing down and sitting on my front porch for a while. Porch sitting is a lost art for most, mainly because large front porches that one could sit on fell out of favor with builders. I happen to live in a historic home that has a very large, wrap-around front porch that is screened in. I can sit out there without being bothered by bugs and watch as people walk by (I was tempted to use the term “stroll by”, but no one seems to have the time to just stroll anymore either). Admittedly a nice glass of wine makes the experience all the more enjoyable.  That is my way of slowing down and getting fast relief.

So, what do you do to find a break from the pace of life? If you don’t have a big front porch to sit on, maybe you have a deck or patio or maybe just a quiet room somewhere in your house that you can “retreat” to. You need to have a refuge somewhere. You need to be able to put down the phone for a nap at workwhile and kick back and just relax. Turning off the phone is even better, but that causes anxiety for many.  For some a nap in the middle of the day may be the answer. That is certainly one sure way to slow down for  a few moments. I’ve done that occasionally and even a short nap of 10-15 minutes is very refreshing. Surprisingly, the world seemed able to function and go on without me for that time.

One must at some point choose just how fast they are going to try to live their life and how much effort to put into “keeping up” with everything that might be going on around them. One could do well to heed the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, – “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” He might well have gone on to say that her reward is longevity.

So, have a great day, but take a few moments, maybe several times during the day, hop off the treadmill of life to slow down and be at peace. The world will go on and you can hop back on at the next stop.

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Posted by Norm Werner