Yesterday I fell asleep on my bed with my mouth full of food and my feet hanging off the end of the bed. It was the grown-up version of the toddler who face-plants into their food in their highchair.

This is not my normal, in case you were wondering. I had 2.5 hours of dental work done and chose to be “consciously sedated”. Bill might question the “conscious” part as he had to get me home after.

Here’s my point. I went from high anxiety to very relaxed. This is NOT a blog recommending drugs. What I want to talk about is our ability to make conscious choices to bring our stress level down AND/OR do things that are highly relaxing.

I could have gone through the dental experience without sedation. “Toughed-it-out”. What would I have proven? Even now I am having to resist to urge to justify to all of you why I did not tough it out. I’m resisting.

What matters is that I respected my emotional and physical resources, my overall well-being, enough to go the easier route. That’s not “chicken” or cowardice, that’s smart, in my opinion.

So, what could reduce your stress level this week?

Better delegation?

Leaving work on time a couple of evenings?

Going for a walk in nature?

Seeing the Dr. over a health concern you have been trying to ignore?

We all do it - try to just ignore our stress. That’s the sick thing about stress - it can attack us both consciously and sub-consciously. So, the more we can be conscious of what is causing us stress the more we can consciously make choices to reduce and intervene in our stress.

Likely, before you can answer the above questions it would help if you took an inventory of what your stresses are right now.

What is keeping you up at night?

What makes you queasy just to think about?

What things make you feel very tired either when you do them or to psych up to do?

When you can narrow down your top stresses you can start to think about the barriers and what additional resources might help.

There is great research suggesting that you add nature to your list. Here is a great article from Psychology Today.

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/why-nature-positively-affects-your-well-being-and-how-to-apply-it/

“According to proponents of environmental psychology, spending time in nature rather than human-made environments has three positive effects:

1 Reduced stress

2 Improved mood

3 Improved cognitive performance”

My wish for you is that you get so relaxed at some point you fall asleep with your feet off the end of the bed. Please do NOT follow my example and fall asleep with food in your mouth!

Until next week,

Marilyn

Marilyn Orr is a Professional Certified Coach, who, through her coaching business “ Capacity Building Coaching ”, thrives on building both personal and organization capacity through leadership coaching and development.

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