Get Cool Again! - 'Fix my head!'

1. Keep a special book where you will put:
a) pictures of things and people that inspire you
b) cuttings from letters, email and cards that compliment you or make you feel better about yourself
c) lists of things you have done to help others
d) lists of things you have done, especially those that you found difficult but did anyway
e) drawing and pictures of your positive future
f) a record of your 'personal development' - what you are learning on your journey

2. Work out what has excited and energised you in the past - what was it about those hings that you liked best? For example, maybe you liked cycling and the best thing was the wind in your hair. Maybe you cannot now cycle - but what else would put wind in your hair and make you feel better? Make plans.

3. Tell the people you love and trust to support you about your plans. Enlist their encouragement and support but do not allow yourself to be dependent upon them for progress

4. Start small. Each time you make a decision to do something, make sure that you achieve that and then, most importantly, ACKNOWLEDGE that you achieved. Only then do you gain the self-confidence and self-esteem to achieve again. Only then do yu get the full motivation to move ahead.

5. Always think about both motivators for doing something - think about the carrot (benefits) and about the stick (what if you did not do that). How do you feel about each of these scenarios? Are you more motivated to achieve?

6. Think about what you would most respect and admire about the things you can do to make an impact during your life - what steps can you make now to move ahead with that journey

7. Think of someone you admire greatly and know quite a lot about. List their qualities. Now, for each quality you have listed, make a rank for yourself om two columns, one for how you fair now, and one for how great you want to be with that quality over a specified time-scale. Be sure to pick only one or two to start with and make ordered plans for achieving those improvements. Get someone to mentor or coach you if necessary.

Life is full of 'stuff'. If you look at the diagram, the left 'eye' is crowded in with 'stuff' and when this happens, we have reduced opportunity to impact with our time, our effort and life.
Much of the 'stuff' that crowds us is not our responsibility and often not anything we have any influence over. For example, lousy politicians, late trains, weather. When these things crop up in your mind, remember simply to refocus on something else - and that something else needs to be somethig where you can have influence in your world. So, if not sure what those things are, make a list! How can you have impact in the world? By doing things? By achieving something? By helping or supporting others? By gaining a new qualification or skill? These are the sorts of things you need in your mind when 'stuff' crowds your thinking out!

Ask yourself for each segment on the wheel, 'how content am I with..?' and score 0 to 10 where ten is high. Having done that, ask yourself what score you can realistically acheive for each segment and over what time-scale? Now look for the one or two segments only that seem to you most influential to you in making a change. Make a sequenced plan to achieve that and involve trusted friends - just tell them what you are doing and why. Keep checking your progress and acknowledging what you achieve. Make allowances for 'shit happening in your life' - be realistic!

If you look at the diagram, you can see that if you go from decision to action and then to thinking about another action, you literally get onto the rat-wheel. Round and round you go increasing stress levels until you find you cannot get off.
One thing to do is to give yourself time (in spite of pressures), preferably some distance away from where your stress is happening, to prioritise and order your action-plan. Spending ten minutes doing this thoroughly (no short-cuts thank you!), is very likely to make you more efficiant in your tasking and achievement following that strategy time.
Notice your body-talk. If you are getting tight muscles, plan to take short spaces, ideally in another space, some feet away from the stress-zone, to breath, let-go and get in touch with being a human again. Remember, we define ourselves healthily if we think of ourselves as beings rather than 'doings'. We are not robots. We do need to experience, to enjoy life and enjoy our efficiency and success!

We all need a certain level of changing stress levels to operate in the world. But if you are being wound-up, or worse, winding yourself up, the blue curve in the diagram is replaced by the red. This happens because of your biochemistry. Your endocrine glands dump chemicals into your bloodstream and it can take quite a while for these to be removed from the blood and excreted into the urine. If another stress event happens before this period is complete, you stay 'high'.

To change the pattern, think about the FIRST thing that you are conscious of when the stress is about to hit. It may be that you see black, or you hear a voice or noise, or that you stop breathing, or your hands get sweaty and your neck stiff. Try and think what you are conscious of before that too so that you can readily notice this when it happens to you again.

Having found the earliest memorable reaction to stress, you have the best chance now of changing your reaction. It needs to be fast too. Try and link your knowledge of this reaction to something that will stop your pattern dead! Some people take a deep breath, others do this but say to themselves: 'this is normal, life happens, I am okay'. Everyone is different and must find their own key pattern-breaker. If in doubt, find a good coach to help you.