Tag: stress

Choose your mood

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” – Abraham Lincoln

Have you ever noticed something that triggers one person and puts them in “a mood” for the rest of the day, but a similar event has no affect on a different person? Why is that?

It seems like some people are predisposed to being angry at the smallest things – letting everything around them affect how they’re feeling at that moment. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. In most cases, it only takes a mindset shift to live a happier, less stressful life. Obviously there are things that happen to us that are very serious. Thinking positively doesn’t necessarily make the situation all better, but it’s still the better choice to make rather than dwelling on the negative. Regardless of how do you think about the situation, you probably can’t control those outside events and you can’t change the past. But you can control how you respond to them.

Choose to be happy and see the good in every situation. Why would you want to choose to be anything other than happy?

Building a buffer for less stress

Build a buffer into your day.

If you schedule everything so strictly, filling every hour of your day, you’re going to feel much more stress. Because if you go over time in one thing, it’s like a domino effect. One thing affects another, which affects another. Next thing you know, the schedule for your entire day is “off” and you feel like you might as well throw your schedule out the window!

You need slack in the line. If everything is so tightly scheduled and rigid, you are setting yourself up for a much more stressful (and probably less successful) day. If you think something is going to take an hour and a half, give yourself two hours to do it. Not everything will be perfect. There will be distractions or things you didn’t anticipate. That is why having that time buffer in place is so crucial.

Don’t stress yourself out. Plan a buffer.