Introduction

This online video course by Chris Croft talks about various practical ways to reduce anxiety and stress in our lives. This course can be found here. Given below are the raw notes I took while attending this course.

Summary

  • anxiety and stress are due to overload of things coming in at us, than what we can deal with normally
  • there are unavoidable things like car breaking down, work pressure etc. That's just life and we have to learn to cope with those
  • avoidable overload
    • these are under our control
    • these might be the things that we are avoiding to confront
  • ability to cope
    • inherent personality - some are better at coping with stress than others
    • acquried personality - we can do something about this
    • techniques
  • we need to reduce the amount of things coming in and improve our coping abilities
  • detect your signs of anxiety and stress
    • behavioral signs (eg: evening creativity can be a sign of stress)
    • physical signs (eg: reduced energy and sex drive, procrastination, clumsy)
    • mental signs (eg: feeling of being overwhelmed, unable to concentrate, sudden anger outburst)
  • we typically allow for these negative emotions to take place in our mind thinking that those have some payoffs (eg: if I worry about the presentation I will prepare better). But almost always those payoffs are false!
  • personality drivers (circular thought habits that cause anxiety)
    • pleasing others - Do the best you can and remember that you can't please everyone!
    • be perfect - remember that perfect is the enemy of good!
  • work/home balance matrix (X = undesirable, ? = probably ok, Y = desirable)
home\work  boring  secure  enjoyable  exciting  stressful
boring       X       X        X          X          X
secure       X       ?        Y          Y          X
enjoyable    X       Y        Y          Y          X
exciting     X       Y        Y          ?          X
stressful    X       X        X          X          X
  • life events can be stressful. However, most of us dont through those events often. But we end up getting anxious over little things in our daily lives!
  • saying no
    • try to reduce the overall amount of commitment
    • don't let the elements that breed anxiety in your life
  • delegate the things that stress out (but there's also a risk of you losing that skill, over time!)
  • procrastination - our adult part of the mind wants to do that task whereas the child part doesn't. The trick is to make sure that the adult wins here. Some of the following tricks can help you in this regard:
    • plunge in and start doing before the mind comes up with reasons to not doing that work
    • give yourself plenty of energy reserves
    • put an appointment in your diary
    • make it a routine
    • break the task into manageable chunks
  • some coping mechanisms
    • make a list of things todo to help clear up your brain
    • remind yourself about the "first world problems"
    • make a plan for each item on this list
    • make contingency plans for things under your control
    • educate yourself on the topics that are bothering your
    • look at some of your risks as also potential opportunity for your growth
    • reach out to your support network for some help/support (there's strength in numbers!)
  • maintain 3 lists
    • a master list - for long term plans and goals
    • a todo list - for daily shor term items to get things done
    • calendar/diary - put all time sensitive things
  • review your list at the end of every week (to check what happened this week and plan for the next week)
  • differentiate the things that are under your control and the rest which aren't
    • remove those that aren't under your control
    • take necessary actions or precautions to the rest!
  • setup a routine in the morning and in the evening. Routines help brain go in the auto-pilot mode which can reduce anxiety