A Personal Stress Audit

Understanding which aspects of your life create stress is the first step to managing it, both at work and at home.  Your Personal Stress Audit will take time and privacy.  It should not be rushed.

1. Sit somewhere quiet and undisturbed.  Taking a pen and paper, write a brief list of any significant events that have happened in your life over the last two years.
2. Now divide your life into categories, such as Work,Relationship,Children,Family,Friends,Finances and son on.  Write them down as headings.
3. Taking each category in turn, note down anything that  causes tension or anxiety, or makes you feel sad or angry, taking care not to judge or censor yourself.  Keep going until you feel that there's nothing more to add.
4. Looking at each category, are there any common themes that stand out?  Are there any areas of stress linking one category to another, for example long working hours causing unhappiness in your relationship?  If so, draw a line connecting them to each other.  Then circle anything you know you must change, and asterisk anything else that you feel should per a priority.
5. Now create a strategy to reduce stress.  There should be no woolly generalizations; it should contain very specific, achievable steps toward the goal of eliminating each stressor.  For example, if you want to cut back long working hours, steps you could take might include: discussing the situation with your boss; delegation more; minimizing time spent in meetings, and so on.  Be determined to move forward taking these steps will make you fee back in control.

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