Stress Management - Do You Know How to Ask the Right Questions for Stress Reduction?
By Ilenya Marrin
Do you know how to ask the right questions to gain greater resilience and stress reduction?
Too many times when stressed out, we try to soldier on, to bulldoze our way through the work or the challenges that we see as the causes of stress.
Power Questions
Instead, here are seven steps for asking your own power questions to create your unique stress relief solutions.
1. Take a break. Get out of the stressful routine, even if only for a few minutes. Go for a walk or a drive or a vacation. But don’t turn off your mind and heart. You’ll need them for the next steps . . . .
2. Pause for reflection. Give yourself some time to think and feel.
3. Envision what you want. Instead of focusing on the stress, clearly imagine what your life would be like without the current stresses. Get the feeling of living at a more relaxed pace, in harmony and personal peace again.
4. Remember peaceful times from the past — successes in terms of less stress. Recall vividly what that was like. Recapture how you successfully stayed more relaxed and peaceful, or were able to handle the stressors with a sense of balance.
5. Ask yourself the first set of power questions: What qualities were you using to support your less-stressed life? What were you doing then that worked well? What strategies did you employ that kept you relatively stress free?
6. Ask yourself the second set of power questions: How can you put some of those qualities, actions or strategies in place in your life now? How can you build on your previous success? What could you do similarly to achieve more personal peace and less stress now?
7. Take action. Choose the most appealing of your answers — the one that could move you toward your reduced-stress-vision — and take action, even if it means a radical change from how you are living now!
Please note that for this approach, I didn’t once suggest that you tackle the problems that might be triggering stress! That’s because many times those problems are beyond your personal control.
Use the power questions to focus on what you already know how to do well to maintain balance and personal peace, and use your own success strategies — in spite of whatever challenges you face — to build in greater resilience and stress reduction.
And if you would like more practical stress reduction tips, I invite you to sign up for my free newsletter, 17 Simple Stress Solutions, at http://www.powerofpersonalpeace.com/optin.htm
Dr. Ilenya Marrin is a spiritual counselor, inspirational speaker and author of ebooks The Power of Personal Peace: Reducing Stress by Loving Yourself from the Inside Out and 77 Loving Steps for Success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ilenya_Marrin
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