164 brilliant stress management
Expressing your feelings
Someone who will listen can be a big comfort to many of us, but
you may not nd talking about your loss comfortable. Instead,
you may prefer to write your thoughts down. Sometimes a letter
to the person you have lost can help and, sometimes, just writing
a few words about them. One of the reasons many cultures
include a description of the departed in their rites is because
formulating it can help us to grieve.
Expressing your faith
If you have a faith, you may nd that its rituals or your relation-
ship with your god are a source of comfort that help you to cope.
Prayer can be a good way of talking about your feelings without
having to nd a person to listen.
Therapeutic support
Counsellors, religious ministers and support groups are readily
available in most communities and can be a big support. The
only caution is to be aware how easy it is to become dependent
upon them for your emotional strength. Those who are skilled
will be aware of this too.
More than survival
Whatever the change, you will eventually come out the other
side. So, how can you do more than just survive? How can you
thrive? Here is a four-step process that will show you how.
Step 1: Analyse
Examine carefully what resources you have. Identify your skills
and experience, personality and knowledge, friends and col-
leagues. These will help you. Focus on the things that are most
important to you. Take an inventory of what you have that can
help you survive, develop and thrive.
Manage stress caused by change 165
Step 2: Aim
Think about what you want. Here, it is important to be careful
to avoid the trap of wanting what you feel you ought to want,
or worse, what other people expect you to want. Instead, think
about what you really want. Be true to yourself and ask the ques-
tion: ‘What would I do if I knew I really could not fail?’
When you have this, it will be massively motivating, so use that
energy to think about how you are going to achieve it. The two
things to focus on are these:
1 What are the important steps along the way?
Identify milestones, waypoints, achievements, and markers
of progress. This is important because these are your
opportunities for success. And when you achieve successes,
you can celebrate them. And when you celebrate, you
feel good about yourself, so you increase in condence.
This leads to better performance and more success. More
success: more celebrations. And so on up and up.
2 What is the rst step along the way?
This is important to get you started. Taking control of your
change is a big thing. Taking one step is easy. And once
you’ve taken one step, the second is easy . . . And so on.
As the Chinese proverb says: ‘A journey of a thousand miles
starts with a single step.’
Step 3: Antenna
Once you know what you want, you have to tune your mental
antenna to spot opportunities to get it. This is a tiny part of your
brain, called the reticular activating system, which could better
be called your ‘serendipity organ’. Once you know what you are
looking for, it is responsible for spotting things in your environ-
ment that conform to the pattern, and bringing them to your
conscious attention.
166 brilliant stress management
It is like a hole in a toddler’s toy. You programme it to a par-
ticular shape you are looking for, it examines everything you see,
and nds the right peg to t in the hole. You really can get what
you look for in life.
Step 4: Action
You’ll create no change without action, so get started as soon as you
can. The most motivating feeling is when we know we have taken
action and we can see the results. Taking action gives you a feeling
of control; seeing the results will give you a feeling of succeeding.
Close the loop
Success comes from persistence, so close the loop. What you
repeat becomes habit and it is your habits that determine the
results you get in life. So, look at the outcome of your action and
analyse your situation objectively. Review what you want and
adjust your aim, retune your antenna to look for more oppor-
tunities, and take more action. Keep this up and you can have
whatever success means to you.
This is more than just survival; this is thriving in times of change.
brilliant
recap
Change is inevitable and our response to it is a natural
consequence of how we have evolved.
We cope best with change by understanding our natural
responses and working with them.
Choosing the right attitudes will help you cope, as will getting
involved and becoming proactive, which will restore a sense of
control over events.
Use the four-step process of Analyse – Aim – Antenna – Action
to turn change to your advantage.
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