Live with Intention
Building an intentional life helps decrease stress
One of the things I often talk about with people in terms of ways to decrease stress, is the need on some level to slow down. To consider which activities are worth your time and which you can miss.
I didn’t coin the term, but working to develop a bit of J-O-M-O (The Joy Of Missing Out) can go a long way to helping us feel less stressed in the day to day.
When we were going through the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic I talked to people about there being an ultimate upside to having social activities off limits. As I saw it once society opened back up, we could choose which of those activities we wanted to put back into our lives. For many it had never occurred to them that they could choose to slow down and/or to build other skills. During the worst of the pandemic we talked about finding activities that were solo and could help us move through the day to day. As vaccines were developed and things started opening up we talked about making choices as to how many of the activities folks wanted to put back into the day to day.
I was perusing YouTube recently and ran across the channel of Kalle Flodin and as I watched I found that he was proposing that folks do several of the things I talk about with people when they are stressed. Stepping away from media in its many forms, living with intention, and doing one thing at a time. He also talked about finding it hard to slow down at the start, but as he continued it became easier.
Our society has become so fast and chaotic that it is often difficult to consider what may be worth stepping back from. One exercise is as follows:
Check your stress level: 0-10 (10 is the most amount of stress)
Find a piece of paper.
Draw a circle in the middle.
This represents your day. You have 24 hours to fill.
Write down all the things you do in a day, everything.
Sleep
Work
Childcare （If this is something that pertains to you)
Self-care
Exercise
Eating—include time spent cooking or obtaining food.
Fun things
Household chores
Bathing
Medication administration
Stuff you do for others
Stuff you do because you thing you have to
Stuff you do because you think it looks good to others
Next to each item on your list estimate how much time you spend doing each of those things.
Now put all that into your chart. Actually enter the pieces. You could even color them in if you choose. Do you have enough room in your circle? Remember we each only have 24 hours in a day.
Then look at the relative value of each of the activities. For example—work likely brings the ability to engage in other things so needs to stay on the list. But maybe you could work less. Consider things you are doing that could be done by others. Consider which things you do because you believe others want you to do them.
Now put into a new chart your ideal (i.e. what you would most like to be doing).
Of course this is for the things that are cyclical and tend to come up regularly. Other things you will have to choose to put in or not. It’s your choice. The key is to be honest with yourself as to how much you want to do and taking a risk to do less when you are feeling stressed.
Read more about stress and over scheduling at The Stress Nest .
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