Maria Gonzalez Blog
Mindful Leadership

Reduce Stress to Experience Greater Fulfillment

One thing that stress does is rob you of pleasure and fulfillment, at work and at home.  If you are stressed at work and are unable to decrease and manage the stress, it will also impact your personal life.  You will be less likely to be present with your spouse, engaged with your children, or attuned to your pets.  And as I have mentioned previously, life only happens in the present.  Miss this present moment and you miss life.  In its extreme form, you will find you are not really a part of your family’s life; instead simply an outsider who goes to work and comes home, never really connecting with others.  This may sound extreme but unfortunately it is more common than you think.

There are two aspects of dealing with stress.  The first is to decrease or eliminate unnecessary stress.  The second is to effectively manage unavoidable stress.  Life will regularly and unavoidably present us with challenges and, at times, with calamity.  That is what it is to live life.  However, and you may not like to hear this, but much of the stress we experience in a given day is avoidable.  What I mean by this is that we bring it upon ourselves, like when we pack more into an hour than is humanly possible to accomplish, when we give ourselves 15 minutes to get to a destination that is 45 minutes away, when we double book ourselves for meetings or commitments.  How can you possibly be relaxed when you are in one meeting and know that you are expected to be down the hall at another meeting?  Or when you are at the hockey rink with one child and know you also need to dash to be with another child for their concert performance.  Any normal human being would be tense under these circumstances.

The first step toward achieving calm and enjoying greater fulfillment is to examine your life. Honestly assess where there is avoidable stress and eliminate it.  You may experience some resistance to this.  If you do, know that one or more of the hindrances are at play.  You know what to do with this.  Be honest with yourself and work to change your behaviour.