Introduction
Why You Need a Lifelong Plan for Handling Problems and Stress
This book can be enormously valuable to you—right now and for the rest of your life! Let’s face it. If you are a hardworking, dedicated executive, manager, or professional in today’s demanding business environment, then there’s a very good chance you are seriously undermining your effectiveness, destroying your health, ruining your relationships, and killing the quality of your life if you don’t know how to approach problems and deal with stress effectively.
The long hours and heavy workload; mergers, layoffs, and restructurings; intense global competition, role ambiguity, or lack of job security; and poor communications and time pressures may be doing you in; not to mention the problems in your family and personal life.
You must take good care of yourself—your body, mind, and spirit—every day to be effective and healthy and happy. That’s the basic premise of this book. The more you neglect yourself, the less able you are to deal with problems and stress, and the less able you are to produce the results you desire most in your life.
Gaining Control of the Way You Handle Problems and Stress
Can you imagine what your life would be like if you could deal with all stressful problems in a way that makes you far more effective, healthier, and happier? Would you be a real star at work? Would you be a better parent? Would you enjoy your personal and social life a lot more? And what other possibilities would open up for you? Promotions? Great times with family and friends? New “personal bests” with respect to your development and performance? Pretty exciting, right?
The ability to control your reaction to a stressful situation is one of the most powerful skills you can ever develop. Many benefits and marvelous opportunities can be yours if you can just learn how to approach problems and deal with stress more effectively.
Imagine yourself being emotionally resilient and bouncing back quickly no matter what pain you experience in life. Imagine turning major setbacks into personal triumphs.
Imagine yourself being physically stronger, full of energy, and enjoying vibrant health, no longer vulnerable to the physical ravages of stress and strain.
Imagine yourself being mentally tough and able to focus your energy on achieving your most important goals with a clear head and total concentration, and thus able to produce your desired results much faster.
Imagine yourself approaching all tough problems in a cool, calm, and collected manner, never letting any problem get you down, including “problem people.”
Imagine yourself happier, truly enjoying your work, your family, yourself, and the world around you. Imagine yourself enjoying each moment of your journey as well as your destination.
Valuable Benefits Desired and Gained by Some of My Clients
You are not alone in your desire to handle stressful situations more effectively. Here are examples of personal effectiveness goals some of my clients have set for themselves and have achieved:
Computer operations manager: “Since the merger, I’ve been trying to make sure I keep my job. People have been cut and I’ve got more responsibility with fewer resources to get the job done. I’ve been working long hours just to stay afloat. I want to learn how to deal with this very stressful situation.”
A competitive, hard-driving director of marketing: “I want to deal with my staff and peers in a more respectful, caring, winwin manner instead of jumping to conclusions and ramming my opinions down their throats in angry, emotional outbursts when under pressure.”
Medical doctor: “I want to learn how to relax. The hours I put in are ridiculous. When I’m not working, I’m always on call. All the extra work that has to be done to avoid potential malpractice, to practice legally defensible medicine, really makes my blood boil. Dealing with the insurance carriers, my partners and office staff, and all the demands my family put on me is impossible. If I could get out of medicine, I would. I want to learn how to deal with all of this.”
Vice-president, finance: “I want to learn how to lead a more balanced, healthier life. I want to spend more time with my family and enjoy a social life but still make significant contributions at work. My marriage is deteriorating. I work long hours and my wife and I are growing apart. When we are together, there’s always a lot of arguing. I want to do well in my job and save my marriage.”
A sales professional who makes presentations to high-level executive committees and important industry groups: “I want to be able to prepare for presentations without worrying so much and getting myself all worked up in anticipation, and I want to make presentations without being so nervous.”
Manager of engineering department: “I want to learn how to deal effectively with my boss, who is a real SOB. He’s driving me crazy.”
Research and development scientist: “I’m a perfectionist. I do excellent work but they say it takes me too long to get things done. The pressure is on for everyone to be more productive. I want to learn how to deal with all the pressure, be more productive, and still be pleased with the quality of my work.”
I am happy to report that by using the principles and personal effectiveness skills presented in this book, these people successfully achieved their goals.
Use this Valuable Benefits Checklist to identify the specific benefits you want to enjoy as a result of learning how to deal with problems and stress more effectively.
Valuable Benefits Checklist
Greater personal effectiveness at work and at home
Better health, more energy and stamina, more physical resilience to stress
Feel in control and in charge of my life
Feel better about myself, greater self-confidence, high self-esteem
A greatly improved quality of life—more fun, joy, happiness
More enjoyment of my work
A nearly constant state of positive thinking and optimism; elimination of fear, worry, and other types of debilitating negative thinking
The ability to stay clear-headed, thinking and functioning at a high level at all times
Increased ability to channel my energy into productive activity, less wasted time and energy
More patience, more empathetic understanding of others, more compassion, better relationships with people at work, at home, everywhere
A new “I can handle any problem” attitude, I’ll no longer let problems get me down or destroy me, I’ll look forward to tackling problems, I’ll replace procrastination with decisiveness and action
The ability to stay focused on creating the results I desire most in my job, family, and personal life
The ability to deal with change in a positive, healthy manner
The ability to stay creative and productive under stress instead of withdrawing or wasting energy on anger and hostility
The ability to see what’s going on more clearly, to learn more quickly
A balance between success in my job and a healthy, happy personal life
Being a better spouse, a better parent
Other: ______________________________________
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The Facts of Life
Problems and stress are facts of life. Your life will always have problems, disappointments, and struggles. That’s just the way life is.
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, some thing to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
—Fr. Alfred D’Souza
We All Have Problems
If you think you are the only person with problems or stress, think again. We all have problems of one sort or another. I don’t know of anyone who is not grappling with some difficulty in his or her life. Do you?
This includes the most successful people: corporate leaders, top-notch professionals, political leaders, sports heroes, entertainment stars, and religious leaders. And it includes mothers and fathers, managers and workers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. It certainly includes all the people you work for, all the people you work with, and all the people who work for you.
We Will Always Have Problems
“Everyday there’s always something.” How often have you heard that?
Some problems stay with us all our life. Some get solved, some go away. But new problems pop up every day. This also is a fact of life.
We have made monumental strides in developing our civilization. We have solved innumerable problems in nearly every field of human endeavor. But with all this progress, is life any less stressful? Are there fewer problems in the world today, compared to 100 years ago? No. Along with all the problems we have solved, we have discovered many new problems and created more stress.
We will always have stressful problems to face, at every age and stage of our life from cradle to grave.
So the fact that you have problems and stress to deal with isn’t the real problem. The real problem is failing to take the time to learn how to approach problems and deal effectively with stress. In other words, you haven’t learned how to take good care of yourself.
Why not learn how to approach problems and deal with stress effectively now? Believe me, it’s better late than never. It definitely is the smart thing to do.
You Can Handle Any Problem That Comes Your Way—If You Have a Plan
This book provides you with a fantastic opportunity to develop a plan for dealing with problems and stress—a Personal Effectiveness Plan that will serve you well—right now and for the rest of your life. It will bring joy to your life by showing you how to take good care of yourself. You’ll learn how to approach problems and deal with stress in a way that makes you far more effective, a lot healthier, and a whole lot happier. It will strengthen your ability to handle any difficult situation, and show you how to be consistently cool, calm, collected, positive, productive, and healthy, especially when the going gets tough.
I wrote this book because I care about you. And I care about the people you come in contact with and have an impact on (e.g., your spouse, children, mother, father, brothers, sisters, boss, peers, staff, customers).
I have a very strong commitment to you having a great life! I know you want to be as successful, effective, healthy, and happy as you can possibly be. I want that for you, too. I am committed to helping you be precisely that. That’s my mission in life.
What’s in This Book?
In Part One, you become aware of just how much your current approach to dealing with problems and stress is affecting your success, health, and happiness. You see what’s missing in your current approach, and learn the secret to being in control when dealing with problems and stress.
In Part Two, you start developing your Personal Effectiveness Plan by clarifying the kind of life you truly want and the kind of values you want to use to guide your approach to life. This will result in your very own Command and Control Center—a frame of reference that will help you make wiser choices every single day.
In Part Three, you have the opportunity to make some wise choices that will definitely help you create the life you want in a cool, calm, collected, positive, productive, and healthy manner. And you will select specific personal effectiveness skills that will support your choices.
In Part Four, you summarize your lifelong Personal Effectiveness Plan and learn how to use it every day.
You Have the Power!
The message of this book is that you have the power to make choices and take action regarding the way you live your life. You always have choices in every situation, no matter how stressful, no matter how tough. Even if you can’t do anything about the situation itself, you can always choose how you look at it and respond to it. You can gain enormous control over your life by consciously choosing how you look at and respond to problems and stressful situations.
The main point is: It’s your choice! How you look at and respond to stressful, frustrating, or pressure-packed situations is your choice. You can choose to be hot, angry, fearful, negative, and unproductive, and end up ineffective, a physical and emotional wreck—burned out, seriously ill, or even dead. Or you can choose to be cool, calm, confident, positive, and productive, and go through life being far more effective, much healthier, and a whole lot happier. It’s your choice. And the choice you make will determine the quality of your life.
This book will put you back in control of your life by showing you how to make wise choices and take wise action. You will come away with a very powerful overall approach and specific techniques for dealing with problems and stress for the rest of your life. You will even learn how to deal with most problems before they even happen! You will be able to say with great confidence, “Whenever I run into a tough problem, especially when the going gets really tough, here’s how I’m going to approach it.” And you will learn how to “lock onto” the kind of life you truly want and how to create that life with minimum wasted energy and maximum joy.
Rest assured that what I offer you in this book works. It works. It works. It works. And it may very well take 15 strokes off your golf game. In fact, you will find you have a much better approach to everything!
Take pride in how you approach problems and deal with stress. Take the time to learn how to take problems in stride. Do it once, right now via this book, and get it over with. And reap the incredible benefits for the rest of your life.
Having been inspired by many of Earl Nightingale’s (founder of the world’s largest producer of success-oriented audio-cassette programs) metaphors of success-producing action, I close this introduction with an adaptation of one of his metaphors and with this promise:
The person who picks up this book and reads it will be a different person. A stronger, more powerful person. A person able to exercise far greater control over success, over health, and over happiness. When the last page of this book is read, the hand that puts the book down on the table will be a different hand. The person who then stands up and walks out into the world will be a changed person. The entangling webs of self-imposed stress and lack of direction will have fallen away and the way made clear. The person now is able to turn problems into opportunities, stress into productive action, dreams into reality, thoughts into things. So-called fate or exterior circumstances are no longer in command. The person who had been a passenger is now, suddenly, the captain.