Stress Relief in Six Paragraphs

I’m experimenting with a little process to bring relief from difficult situations you might find yourselves in. The idea is to give you a simple way to change the way you think and feel about any ‘problem situation’. It only takes a few minutes and you don’t need any special equipment or knowledge.

Perhaps you might like to give it a go and let me know what happens.

1. Write a paragraph (or two) about what ever is bothering you. Write it in the first person. That should be quite easy most of our problems are experienced in the first person: I am having a problem, I am feeling bad about etc, etc. Here’s a short example.

“I’m avoiding clearing my inbox”

2. Re-write the paragraph in the third person. That is swap every instance of ‘I’ for ‘he or she’, ‘my’ for ‘his’ or ‘her’ etc.

“He is avoiding clearing his inbox”

3. Re-write the paragraph putting it into the past perfect tense, which indicates completed action in the past. E.g. He had finished his lunch, she had struggled to loose weight, etc

“He had avoided clearing his inbox”

4. Decide what ’that other you’ would like to do instead of having the problem. How would ‘he’ or ‘she’ rather be?

“He would like to clear his inbox joyfully and easily” (OK, I admit that’s a bit of a stretch, but what the heck)

5. Re-write that aspiration in the present tense (still in third person) as if ‘he’ or ‘she’ is already doing that.

“He is clearing his inbox joyfully and easily”

6. Finally step back into that ‘other you’ by re-writing this in the first person present tense.

“I am clearing my inbox joyfully and easily”

Now take a few moments to consider the original ‘problem’ statement.

What is it like now?