So you have moderate stress?
There are three basic ways people cope with stress. Avoid it and act like it doesn’t exist. Suffer through it and hope it’ll be over soon or manage it and move on with your life. For obvious reasons, avoiding the issue does not make it disappear. The longer it remains unaddressed, the worse it can get making it harder on you. If you think “it’ll work itself out,” please consider the cost. You don’t need to suffer unnecessarily when you can manage it and live the life you are meant to live. Here are a few stress-management techniques that require you to think differently and change a few habits.
Turn in Your Cape
A simple truth that many Black women find hard to accept is that you are not superhuman. Black women carry the weight of the world on their backs and make it look effortless until signs of the slow cracking beneath the pressure begin to show.
The cracking can show up as short-tempered, unfocused, and forgetful to constant headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, weight loss, and weight gain, just to name a few. You can’t continue to power through life, taking on stress from home, work, and just living life as a Black woman without help or an outlet to reduce stress. Your emotional, mental, and physical health are at stake.
The good news is that you only have average stress right now. Let’s keep it that way by establishing new practices that can help prevent added stress and pressure.
• Ask for help- “Closed mouths don’t get fed,” so speak up and ask for what you need. Yes, maybe you can eventually figure it out on your own or get it down quicker, but at what cost?
• Just say no- If “no” is too harsh, soften it with another phrase, but please do not say yes to something you don’t have the time, strength, or financial means to support. Or prioritize what’s most essential and commit only to what you actually have to give.
Stress-Analysis
Take a minute to stop and think about what in your life is causing stress. This is where journaling comes in handy. Note the situation, who was involved, and how you felt, reacted, and left it. Writing it down allows you to come back and see it from a new perspective. Journaling may not come easy to you, don’t force it. Start with a prompt to get started, and you’ll establish a routine over time. There are digital journals for people who lean into technology. Here is a downloadable digital journal so you can get started today.
Plan Ahead
Planning, prioritizing, and preparing for stressful events that you know are coming require discipline but are worth it to reclaim your life. Believe it or not, some prep work can prevent or reduce stress. If you always feel pressured by running out of time, then a Time-Block Calendar will be your new bestie. It can be intimidating at first, but there is a sense of relief when every minute is planned out, and you can visualize the time set aside for tasks on your to-do list.
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Download our free digital journal designed for beginners. It’s easy to use with prompts to help you get started. Come back for our full planner and journal once you create a consistent journaling routine.
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Preparation is the key to success and less stress. It’s going to take discipline to plan faithfully plan your week but the liberation in seeing progress is worth the time.
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Sometimes you need to hold the plan in your hand to make it real. A printable time block allows you to create your schedule online and print it out or print out the blank time block and write it in. Anyway is the right way as long as you commit to it.
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Basic instructions for using Time Block Planner
1. Make a list of all tasks you must complete in a week.
2. Color-code the list based on priorities.
Red- Act- Urgent and needs to get done this week
Yellow- Observe- Should get done this week but can get done in the next two weeks (any longer, it can risk becoming Red)
Green- Wait- Will need to get done at some point, but after Red and Yellow have been completed
White- No action- You should be aware of it in case it eventually needs your attention- this should not make it to the Time Block Planner
Black- Dismiss- There is nothing that you can do here. It’s out of your hands or skill set, or you don’t have the time or energy to commit to it.
3. Place your existing meetings for the week on the Time Block Planner.
4. Place the Red tasks on the Time Block Planner based on how much time completing the tasks will realistically take. If it will take two hours, then block off two hours.
5. Repeat with the Yellow tasks on your list.
6. Schedule time to check emails.
Blocked times are just that. It is time to focus on that one and only task during the specified time.
No emails, phone calls, or meetings unless they are directly related to completing the tasks.