Mastering your life

Curing Complains and Blaming Others Part 2

2006-01-26T22:32:00.000+08:00

If you would like to find out the secret to curing your tendency to complain and blame others, this week's post will provide you with the methods to get rid of this habit.

In our daily life, there are certainly lots of situations whereby we felt compelled to complain about others and even talk about how bad luck has landed us in this messy situation. This is a common habit as I've discussed earlier in my previous post that we like to potray ourselves as the victim, so that we can feel better after a bad experience.

Now try this exercise! (even if you are not feeling frustrated now) Whenever something bad (but not a life threatening situation) happens to you next time, just take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Repeat this for another 2 times. You will feel more calm about yourself and it would be less compelled to blame someone or complain about it.

Why does this happen? It is because that after inhaling and exhaling, you are actually applying a technique to keep yourself calm. When calmness envelops you instead of frustration, it's natural that you will be able to control your emotions and feelings better and not lose yourself to a sudden surge of anger.

Another method is to view it from another angle! Look at this frustrating experience as a chance for you to grow and better manage your emotions. For example, if you arrive late, due to heavy traffic jam, for a important business meeting and lost a important contract deal. Instead of blaming the traffic jam, reflect on how you actually got yourself into this situation! You would realise that if you leave your office an hour earlier for the business deal, you would probably arrive on time even if there is a traffic congestion. By reflection, you would be able to improve yourself and correct your common habits that will land you in negative experiences.

This will be my only post for this week, as I would be celebrating the Chinese New Year! To all Chinese out there, Happy New Year! And for non-Chinese, Happy Holidays to you too! A new topic will be discussed next week, stay tuned.

Curing Complains and Blaming Others Part 1

2006-01-18T23:23:00.000+08:00

This week's post will be focused on how to prevent yourself from falling into the self-victim trap. Part 1 today will point out to you about when we start to walk into such a trap.

Most of us would definitely at some point or another in our lives, complained about our ill fate due to an unforeseen circumstance or due to a particular person's doing.

This is actually making yourself to be a victim of your ill fate, so the words and thoughts that generated from your mind are mostly self-pitying or self comforting excuses. Such people tend to overlook their own actions, which might have contributed or caused this unpleasant situation to materialise. The following scenario below will emulate what is mentioned above clearly.

John was asked by Kris to go for a party on the eve of his chemistry test paper. Although John was reluctant at first, but Kris was very persistent and she told him that he would definitely enjoy his time at the party. John gave in and went for the party till late past midnight. As John was a last minute student, he started studying for his test 3 days before the actual test. Thus, he was unprepared for the chemistry test and failed the paper.

John started playing the self-victim and started blaming Kris for distracting him from revision and causing his failure. Soon, a few closer friends of John learnt about this and started comforting him and blaming Kris about John's plight.

What John did not realise is that by playing the self-victim, he is blaming others for his own faults and bad habits. If he did prepare himself consistently before the test, he would not have failed just because of a day of partying. He would also be able to appreciate Kris's kind offer to have fun to destress too.

This story shows clearly on the importance of self reflection before you start to complain about anything else, which causes your unpleasant experience. The only way to conquer our tendency to complain or blame others is to exercise self control before our tongue commits evil.

In Next week's post, I shall share with you on the ways to correct this bad habit.

Handling Stress Part 3

2006-01-13T10:01:00.000+08:00

In this final posting on handling stress, we shall discuss on the ways of effective destress methods.

Most of the time, people are too involved in their daily work to find time for relaxation activities. Many are working long and irregular hours, thus this causes them to build up high levels of stress. When stress levels continue to rise, people tend to feel sleepy, unfocused, temperamental easily. Most people with a hectic work life will eventually find themselves returning home late regularly and they will be jump into bed instead and wake up early next day to repeat this stressful cycle. As rest is important to every individual, it is necessary to find time to lower these stress levels in order to stay healthy and perform better.

At times when you are busy at work, take 5 mins off after every hour of doing work to go to the washroom to freshen up or get yourself a nice drink to refresh. Even looking at your work desk poster of a waterfall helps to flush away stress. All these methods introduced here are to actually relax your mind from work for a while, so that you can be more focused when you get back to work.

After work, try to spend some time everyday from 30 mins to 1 hr to do something that you enjoy. Listening to music, reading books, meditation, yoga, jogging and etc are all good methods of relaxation. For example, doing yoga allows you to relax all your tensed up muscles accumulated in your daily work and together with meditation, you can work wonders by purging the stress and pent up frustrations from your mind. (Do take note that when doing meditation, it is necessary to do it in a room where no one or phone will disturb you, or else you will develop a bad mood instead when interupted.)

On weekends, you can also go on a nature stroll in the park or nature reserves. As most of us are facing a concrete jungle everyday, it is important to connect yourself back to nature. Nature's greenery is a powerful element which enables even the most stressed up person to feel relaxed in it's embrace. Interacting with your good pals and family can also bring down levels of stress, as you feel loved and cared for in their presence.

Most importantly, just make sure you take out a portion of your time everyday to do recreational activities that you enjoy. This will ultimately bring a balance back to your social and work life.

This is the final posting on handling stress. Hope you can benefit from here. In the next topic next week, I shall share with you on ways to deal with your tendency to complain and blame others when things go wrong.

Handling Stress Part 2

2006-01-12T00:19:00.000+08:00

This post today is to share with you about ways to prevent stressful situations from happening.

It is common that all of us will face different stressful situations at different phases of our lives, but the truth is that they can all be handled using similar methods. Read on and find out more about how you can do so.

Common scenarios of how stressful situations occurs.

1. Procrastination of work until the deadline is due soon.

2. Unorganised personal schedule

3. Easily affected by peer pressure or external pressure from a superior.

In one way or another, we experienced such situations in our lives before. The easiest way to prevent stress build-ups is to avoid such situations.

Procrastination can be prevented by changing your way of thinking towards a project that you need to complete. The assigned project might be boring or involve a large portion of your personal time to complete it. Therefore, most people would just look at the deadline and say "It's still 3 months before deadline, let me finish my computer game first before I start on it." When you start giving yourself excuse to not work on your assigned project, your number of excuses will increase as the day passes. Generally, the internal alarm starts ringing when it's a week before due date. By then, it might be too late to extinguish the fire.

To alleviate this procrastination, start to bring in new beliefs and throw out your old beliefs. Instead of working towards the real deadline, try working towards your personal weekly deadline instead. By doing so, you are consistently working towards the completion of your project. Therefore, stress levels will be greatly reduced and work is well progressed towards completion.

The next point about planning an organised schedule will greatly benefit people who wants to be in control of their daily lives. By charting out all personal schedule, you will be prepared in advance as to what you will be doing for the day. Thus, ruling out last minute preparations for presentations or meetings.

The final stress inducing scenario can actually be handled by communicating with your peers and supervisor about the situation. Let them understand the work that you are expected to do, so they will at least set realistic deadlines for you. By communicating effectively, your peers and supervisor might even volunteer to share your heavy workload or assign extra resources to you.

Next on Part 3, I will share with you about how to destress after work.

Handling Stress Part 1

2006-01-11T12:07:00.000+08:00

Have you ever felt so tensed and stressed due to numerous waves of deadlines or having to handle tactful situations everyday?

If you do and have no idea how to handle them, then read on.

For part 1, I shall just share with you about how to meet deadlines in the least stressful way.

Stress at work is the number 1 cause of all sorts of illnesses, mood swings, bad decision making and etc. One way to handle them successfully is to understand the cause of stress first. Stated below are a list of questions that you should ask yourself when you are feeling growing levels of stress.

What is the cause of my stress?
Who is the person or people involved in the creation of my stress?
Why is the problem, people or situation giving me stress?
What can I do to make myself less stressful?
How should I go about doing it?

After all these questions are answered, you should be able to identify the main reason for your stress. With the answers for each question, its time for the solutions to your stress problems.

Sample examples

1. What is the cause of my stress?

Ans: Your deadline for the proposal is next week and you are only halfway done with it.

2. Who is the person or people involved in the creation of my stress?

Ans: The manager is asking you to send him progress reports everyday to update him.

3. Why is the problem, people or situation giving me stress?

Ans: The company will suffer a million dollar loss if your team failed to deliver on time.

4. What can I do to make myself less stressful?

Ans: The main cause of stress is due to the possibility that you might not meet the deadline and the manager is pressuring you, together with the responsibility of answering to the company if it suffers a loss. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss with the manager on how he can help me to complete the project on time instead by giving me more human, work resources or etc and make him understand your difficulty.

5. How should I go about doing it?

Ans: You can discuss and make your difficulties known to the people involved after a detailed analysation of your present situation. If it is not possible to work out a solution to this, then start to make out a detailed plan on your schedule to complete the project within the week. With a clear plan drawn out and strictly followed to complete the daily set goals, it would be much more possible for you to complete the project on time.

Next post in part 2, I will touch on ways to actually preventing very stressful situations from happening.