This is our second guest blog from Dave Algeo on “positive Coping During Tough Times”

To begin with, we need to recognise the two ‘stress states of mind’:

Overwhelm – that ‘in the moment’ feeling of losing it, panic, anger, freeze, high emotion.

The aim here is to manage the state so as to do minimal damage in a given situation, like saying something you regret. It is also about reducing the emotional temperature in order to get back to the ability to actually think clearly.  The key point here is you are not trying to solve the problem or problems in this state. You are simply aiming to return to a state in which you can  solve the problems.

How? By creating space and time for yourself.  The old adage of ‘breathe and count to ten,’ or ‘take five’ remain true.  It really is about creating space between you and the stressor that has tipped you into overwhelm.  More on this in the next article.

Overload – the underlying problem of carrying around too many cabbages for too long, aka ‘the grind.’

This is where we struggle to see what we can actually do to deal with the demands of life and work. All we can see is cabbages. In other words, we can lose perspective on how to actually deal with the individual demands and problems.  It becomes one smelly pile of cabbage.

There are numerous ways of dealing with them, but the underlying principle is to label your cabbages.  In other words, establish what the demands are and why they are causing stress: understand them.

Then it’s about deciding what to do with them.  Can you ditch a cabbage?  In other words, do you even need to be dealing with it? Is it even your cabbage? We often carry problems and demands around that aren’t even ours.  Can we delegate them?  Can we delay dealing with them (practically rather than procrastinating).

Ultimately, taking action on the cabbages, focusing on what we can do rather than dwelling on what we can’t do is critical.

Enter the sprouts.

This is where we need to understand a big truth about our capacity to handle the cabbages (the big stuff).

Our brain is rubbish at carrying around the cabbages.

It hasn’t evolved to juggle so much stuff.  It has evolved to be in the moment, pay attention, notice, assess, absorb and deal with the challenges at hand.  Clutter up our mind with cabbages and things get chaotic and unmanageable.

Therefore, when identifying our cabbages, we need to do so outside our head.  In short, get them out of your head and free up your mind.

Then pick a cabbage.  Which one?  My advice would be to pick the smelliest one. The one you least want to confront and may well have been procrastinating on.  That’s likely to be the one carrying the most psychological weight.

Then what?

Then get slicing and dicing.  In other words, break the demand, problem or goal into smaller slices (themes or areas), and then chunk down into sprout sized chunks.  That could be chunks of time or sprout-sized actions.

Your brain can handle sprouts when under stress.

So focus on identifying the cabbage to chunk down into sprouts and sweat those sprouts.

Managing our stress effectively comes down to this core truth.

Your brain will sweat the cabbages and achieve nothing if allowed to do so.

Instead, step away when overwhelmed, grab a pen and paper and make a list of the cabbages.

Pick one cabbage that needs your attention and then get to slicing and dicing.

Identify sprout-sized actions, work in sprout-sized chunks of time and get to sweating those sprouts.

Happy sprout sweating. Dave