We all know how busy life can be and that is a constant source of stress to some people. Life is hard enough without adding extra stress through our own options. There are a lot of ways to make our lives easier and a lot of it can be covered by simplifying our environment.
The further down the rabbit hole you go the harder it can be to see a way out of it but there is always a way out of these situations. No matter how tough it seems it is in your own power to change the outcome.
Five years ago i was in a job that i hated working for a soulless company that only cared about targets and profits. The culture was built from the top down and you could feel that poison seep down through the levels to the front line employees resulting in a huge staff turnover and constant stress for their managers. With our hands tied by profit margins there was no way to run the business in a happy and healthy manner for the staff no matter how much we tried to build a good working environment.
It all led to stress and sickness among the staff and management. Not how anybody should be spending their days. So i made a plan to move towards a healthier lifestyle. Being single at the time it wasn't going to be easy to break away from the steady income that the job provided but the key to making big changes is to break them down in to little steps.
Big plans can be very stressful as it's hard to see how you can go from zero to one hundred but often it can be in one hundred small steps rather than two or three giant ones.
I was at zero working unsociable hours in a job that i didn't like. My end goal was to buy a house and then find a new job with less hours that could cover that cost but in an company that i enjoyed working at. That would take a big leap form where i was so i set a plan over a couple of years to get into the right position to make it happen.
Within a year after completing my plan i left the job that i was in when i reached financial stability to pay the bills and cover the costs of my lifestyle in a smaller role with a better quality of life. There were many smaller steps in between these bigger milestones as well that i completed on a weekly and monthly basis but just having an end goal set in place. Creating a realistic plan to achieve this and then knocking off these steps one by one made it possible to achieve a big goal.
Even for smaller goals it's a great idea to break them down into more manageable steps. Write them down, give yourself deadlines. Have a clear plan in place.
It takes a lot of the stress out of situations when everybody knows what they are meant to be doing and what stage they should be at in any given moment.
If you were to take a look at the stress points in your life right now would it be possible to remove them from the equation? Is there anything that you could change in the next twelve months to make your day run smoother?
Where could you simplify your routine to free up some time or space?
I have a few in mind at the moment that i will work toward over the next few years. It's good to try and be successful in life but sometimes it's even better to simplify it and take a step back too.
