stress management system

The vast majority of ordinary people can build a stress management system that is fully adapted to their own rhythm and can be implemented for a long time without any burden. The core is never to completely eliminate stress, nor to copy other people's mindfulness and exercise lists. Instead, it is to build a lightweight closed loop of "trigger-buffer-adjustment-review" around your own stress triggering rules. You don't even need to know how it works, as long as it is easy to use.

Last year, when I was working as an EAP resident at an Internet company, I met a 36-year-old operations director who had just been discharged from the hospital after suffering from stomach bleeding. He had annual passes for three or four stress management apps in his pocket, and his fitness card expired in 11 months. He said that he had tried all kinds of methods, and when he thought of finding time to do these "prescribed actions," his head grew three times, which made him even more stressed.

There is actually no unified standard answer to stress management in the academic community. The cognitive behavioral school believes that the root cause is your interpretation of stressful events. Replacing "I must do well" with "I will try my best" can solve most of the problems.； The physiological regulation school is more direct. They believe that stress is caused by excessive cortisol, which can be reduced by moving around, sweating, and having a good sleep. ； There is also the system school that has become popular in recent years, which does not bother with single-point adjustments at all. It advocates integrating stress management into every little habit of your daily life, without having to set aside time to do it separately. No one is right or wrong among these schools, and they are suitable for completely different groups of people - if you naturally think too much and tend to get into trouble easily, then adjusting your cognition will work for you. ； If you don't have so many twists and turns in your mind and are simply tired, then going home and soaking your feet would be better than anything else.

I have a friend who works as a freelance illustrator, but he doesn’t know these theories at all. The management method he came up with has been used for three years without losing its chain: always carry a soft peach in the bag, and when he sees Party A, he says "Are you there?" There is a slight modification” message, please wait for 30 seconds before replying. ； There is a two-centimeter-high succulent placed on the workstation. Every time I finish revising a version of the manuscript, I pour two drops of water on the succulent. ； When I leave the office after get off work, I must buy a saltwater popsicle at the convenience store at the intersection, walk one stop and then take the subway. What kind of standardized method do you think this is? But she herself said that since she started these little habits, she has never dropped her hand-drawn tablet because of revising manuscripts in anger, and even the migraines she often suffered before have disappeared.

Many people have misunderstandings about the word "system". They think it must be a set of rules written in a notebook. If one item is missed, the system will fail. In fact, this is not the case at all. Just like the operating system of your mobile phone will occasionally freeze the screen and pop up an error message, restart it and it will be over. Is it necessary to throw away the phone just because it freezes once? A client previously made a stress management list for himself. He meditated for 20 minutes at 6 a.m., ran 3 kilometers at noon, and wrote a 1,000-word emotional diary at night. He gritted his teeth and persisted for 8 days. On the ninth day, he worked overtime until he got home at 11:30, but he accomplished nothing. He sat on the sofa and cried for half an hour. He felt that he could not even manage stress. He was a waste. You said this is not stress management. This is another KPI for yourself, right?

If you really want to build your own system, you don’t have to start a big project at all. Just find out the first signs of stress in yourself: some people have temples twitching, some people can't help but bite their back molars, and some people subconsciously click on short videos to watch. After touching this signal, first find yourself a "braking action" that can be completed in 10 seconds. Touch the small pendant you carry in your pocket, take a sip of warm salt water, or even stand and stretch yourself. Anything will do. The less you have to use your brain, the better. This is the first patch for your system.

The later ones are more casual. If you like to play with data, just use the whole small table. Every time you are stressed, write down two entries. What triggered it and what method you used to relieve it. If it works well, use it next time. If it doesn't, throw it away.； If you don’t like writing, just take a sticky note. When you feel unhappy, draw a cross on it and stick it on the refrigerator. At the end of the month, take a quick look at which piece has more crosses. You’ll probably know what was going on at that time. Just leave a buffer in advance next time.

Oh, by the way, don’t believe the nonsense that “pressure is motivation”, and don’t think that being stressed means you have poor mental quality. The former is suitable for short-term sprint projects. The pressure before the deadline can really help you improve your efficiency. If you are hovering at the critical line every day for three consecutive months, let alone motivation, your body will collapse first. ； The latter is even more ridiculous. It's normal to feel stressed when encountering bad things. If you really don't feel emotional about anything, it doesn't mean you have good psychological quality, it means you are numb.

In the past two years, I have talked with people in different industries and found that the best stress management systems are all not so "standardized": some programmers fix bugs and get tired of fixing them, so they go to get half a cup of hot water, watch the heat steam out, and then go back to type code.； Some teachers will blow bubbles to the green plants in the corridor for three minutes after class. ； There are also salespeople who go to the toilet to take a piece of toilet paper every time they are scolded by a customer, tear it into pieces and then throw it away.

To put it bluntly, what kind of tool is this system used to manage you? It is a small cushion that you build for yourself. When you fall down, you will not hit the hard ground directly. You don’t need to compare with others whose cushion is thicker or better-looking. It is enough for you to step on it softly and catch your bad moods.