Hey everybody, it’s Matt from Situation Positive. If you’re living with a chronic illness, like I am, you know, that stress is the enemy. So what are some of the ways you could combat stress? One of the ways, and the way that I want to focus on in this video is to anticipate a stressful event so that way you can plan to minimize the stress.
So what do, I mean? Let’s say you’re going on a vacation. Prior to going on vacation, I would say about 24 hours before departure, your stress level is going to slowly creep up till it hits 10. Right? And around the time, a couple of hours before you have to go to the airport. Your stress has got to be at an all-time high.
Now, why is that? It’s because you’re thinking about what did I not do? What did I not pack? What am I forgetting? Who did I forget to tell? Did I make all the right lists? I mean, just a million different things about leaving your home to go on a relaxing vacation. Can conjure up an extremely high amount of stress.
So what can you do to avoid that? So to avoid stress for an event that you can predict, like traveling, one of the things you should do is start early. Okay. So I’m going on a trip next week. So I’ve got about seven days to get everything I need to be done. So I have arranged the dog sitter way in advance, so I don’t have to worry about my dogs.
I have we’re going to international. So I’ve called my phone company. So I’m not going to expect any kind of roaming or those kinds of charges. You know, we identify all of the clothes that we’re going to wear. Not only for me and my wife but the kids. So it’s a week out and we already know what to pack and we’ve actually started packing because we know what we want to bring down there.
We’re able to set that stuff aside and get the bags packed way early. We spent this weekend getting all this stuff we need, we’re going to an island. We’re going to an island in the Caribbean. And we got plenty of stuff we need down there. And we’re talking about, you know, suntan lotion after sun lotion you know, all of our toiletries you know, any kind of.
Medicine for headaches or stuff like that, you know we’re making sure that all that stuff gets done. And we started with the checklist. What we did was put everything on this checklist. So as we get through each thing, we check it off, check it off, check it off and you know, what’s happening.
We’re not stressed about next week. We know that the plane is going to take off at a certain time. We’re going to be there and we’re prepared. And that feeling of preparedness, we’re able to anticipate a stressful moment and minimize it. It’s that kind of thing. And you know what it’s hard to do, especially you got kids, you got a busy life.
A lot of times we late wait till the last moment with everything right. But if you know, it’s going to be an event that could trigger stress you could plan for it ahead of time. I know we did. And you know, to quote the great Bob Marley, we’re not worried about a thing cause we know everything’s going to be all right.
And we’re prepared for it. My name’s Matt Cavallo. This has been Situation Positive. Remember, no matter your situation, you can turn it positive.
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