Stress Management Tactics for Emotional Resilience - Irina Scarlat

Developed by Dr. Albert Ellis, the ABC Model is a technique that you can use to identify your cognitive distortions and change the way you respond to adversity. 

The letters in the name of the model stand for:

• Activating event: the situation that triggers a particular response from you;
• Belief: your interpretation of the activating event;
• Consequences:Emotional: how you feel about the activating event;
  Behavioural: what you do / how you react to the activating event.
  

Most of the decisions we take are reversible. Some of them easily reversible, some of them more difficult to change. But reversible, nonetheless.

"If you can’t take it anymore, you change it. Complaining is not an option and you’re not paying me to pity you. It’s in your power and your power only to change something”

Grouped the tasks into categories: 

• all tasks related to one particular project, all non-essential work tasks, 
• catching up with email, 
• personal things to do such as shopping online, time with my loved ones

Blocked uninterrupted chunks of time in calendar for each category

Takes time to get accustomed to not jumping from one thing to another chaotically

Do we have a problem? What’s the solution? 

If we don’t have a solution and we cannot change things, then we don’t have a problem. It’s just the status quo and we’ll learn to live with it. 

Stressing out won’t make things better – it will just make you feel miserable and you’re not going to be able to focus on what really matters. 

And that’s the problems that you can actually solve and the things that you have the power to change.

No matter how impactful your work is, irrespective of how indispensable you see yourself, the Earth keeps spinning around.

Ask yourself a set of questions before engaging in any activity:

• Does spending time on this bring me closer to my goal? Personal or professional, it works wonders every time. If the answer is no, just don’t.
• Can I do something else to help me reach my goal faster or more effective? If yes, than do that instead.
• Last, but definitely not least, does it bring you joy? And yes, this is very important, because if it does, it’s definitely worth doing – it’s something you do for yourself.

Divide all your commitments into 4 different buckets, based on their importance and urgency:

1. Do now – things that are both important and urgent.
2. Plan ahead – things that are important, but don’t require your immediate attention.
3. Delegate – urgent issues that are not that important. 
4. Don’t do. Never – issues that are neither urgent, nor important, like taking that sales call for a product you’re not interested in buying or meeting over coffee with a person you have nothing to talk about.