Too Busy for Your Own Good by Connie Merritt Read Free Book Online

your immunity—your resistance to infection or disease and your response to biochemical, environmental, and psychosocial factors—is being challenged.
Your Emotional Indicators
    Your emotional state says a lot about how you’re handling your busyness. All of us have a variety of emotions, and we needn’t worry about the occasional overreaction. The key to which of these emotions you feel or exhibit is not that you feel them but the frequency, intensity, and duration of these emotions. Professional mental health care providers use a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association called the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders
, currently in its fourth edition (
DSM-IV
). They are instructed to become concerned when five or more of the following symptoms of depression are present for most of the day nearly every day for at least two weeks.
    Which, if any, of these symptoms are you now experiencing?
    Irritability with friends and loved ones
    Anger at little things or certain people
    Temper outbursts or road rage
    Escapism or the desire to run away
    Memory loss, mental gridlock, or brain fog
    Feeling frustrated or discouraged
    Inability to make a decision
    Feelings of unworthiness or shame
    Negativity or resentment
    Unfinished grieving for a loss
    Loss of attention or concentration
    Hypochondria
    Feeling down or ready tears
    Anxiety or a feeling of impending doom
    Resignation to difficult situations
    If you have five or more of these symptoms along with persistently sad and empty feelings for two or more weeks, please get professional help. See a mental health care provider or your primary care doctor, as most cases of depression will not be helped by stress reduction alone.
    As you can see, excess stress has a powerfully negative effect on your life—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Read on to learn a simple, easy, and quick way to counteract the little stresses before they deplete your natural resources. The following exercise can be used any place or time—except when operating heavy machinery or driving a car—and as often as you want, without unpleasant side effects.
Five-Minute First Aid
    Under certain conditions, a small cut on your arm could kill you—for instance, if the cut was in an artery and you were anemic, in which case your blood wouldn’t clot, and you could do nothing to stop it. Likewise, everyday busyness leads to stress, which can lead to potentially life-threatening health problems if you’re not careful. Luckily, there are several small adjustments you can make that will stave off these health problems. That’s why I’m giving you a powerfully simple first-aid tool for your antistress kit. As with a pressure-relief valve (or the little jiggler on top of a pressure cooker), benefits of this exercise are immediate. It is faster and longer acting than popping a pill and without the lingering consequences of a tequila shot.
    I’ve been teaching this five-minute first aid at my workshops for many years to men and women of all ages and from a variety of work and life positions. No matter if my topic focus is dealing with difficult people, gender conflicts, or stress reduction, I always throw this exercise into the mix. I get e-mails, letters, and comments from people telling me that it works so well that they now incorporate it into their lives and teach it to others. Several managers have taught it to their staff and have taken to handing out their own version of a “first-aid pass” that gives a worker permission to take a five-minute first-aid break
now
. Another manager of a particularly stressed-out department turned an unused closet into an SFA (stress first-aid) room—complete with chair, pleasant posters, light switch, and an “occupied/available” sign on the door.
    Bonnie runs her own catering business, often with more than twenty people working for her on a job. She started using this process when