"Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency." - Natalie Goldberg

Stress is an emergency that needs to be dealt with immediately.

I realised yesterday that I am feeling stressed in my new job. It is not the job itself that is making me stressed though; I love what I'm doing and I think I am doing it very well. It is not even the fact that I am short of time to do all I need to do before deadline. No, it is the fact that my editor is stressed and because she is stressed she wants me to do stuff on a last minute warning, and that is making me stressed. I am a planning person, I don't like sudden changes (unless I come up with them), and I plan my time. Not every minute or even every hour of it, but to the point that I know that tomorrow I am spending my whole day doing research and writing, so that I might be able to get some time off the following day. Now, if my boss were to ask me to come to her office to work tomorrow that mean that I have to change all my plans, not only for tomorrow but for the day after and probably for the day after that as well.  That is what is making me stressed.

I understand that my editor is under a lot of pressure and stress at the moment, we are doing the first issue of a new magazine and she wants everything to be as good as it possibly can. What she doesn't seem to realise is that if I don't get the time I need, when I need it, to do what I need to do; then what I do will not be as good as it can be, and we both want and need it to be. This is both our future, it is not only now and this issue.  However, we are doing it in about half the time we will have in the future and it is the first time for us. I am sure it is only teething problems and once it is all in print and the first issue is out, we can all sit down and talk about what we like and don't like and what needs to be changed for the next issue. Baby steps for a grown up is sometimes hard.

Anyway, I might be feeling stressed but since I realise it I can do something about it. I am in charge of my life and what I don't like I can take control over and change. I will do my job as good as I possibly can, and that is all I can do, but I will do it without stress. Stress will only make it bad, and it will put bad feelings into what I write and that is not good. I’m taking my time and I am doing it my way.

My dream of being a writer has a lot to do with freedom, to work a lot on my own conditions, a writer is an artist and not an office worker. A writer needs the freedom to fly. Give us a deadline and we will do what is necessary to make it, but don't hold us down. We will either get a writer's block or leave you screaming behind us. Some guidelines and rules and how it is supposed to be written is fine, and sometimes good, but don't plan our time for us.

This is all new to me and I am realising more and more about it as I go along. Knowledge is good, knowledge will help me understand why I react and feel the way I feel and as long as I know that I can work with it instead of against it.

If you are stressed you need to learn how to prioritise what you need to do. I said no to meeting my editor today, I don't have time because I have a job to do. I am writing this blog post because it is relaxes me to write it and it puts me in the writing state of mind. I do what I need to do to be able to do what I need to do. Everything is not an emergency! Although feeling stressed is, so take care of that first, and after that you can get on with what else needs to be done.

What makes you stressed? Why does it make you stressed? What are you doing about it?

You can read about Natalie Goldberg here and here.

Love

Carina

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - Carl Jung

Get aware and make your unconscious conscious.

Yesterday's post was about expectations and that you get what you expect, the problem with that is that most people don't know what they expect. Most people are led by their unconscious and not their conscious minds. And the unconscious mind is not a very obvious place, it isn't all  that easy to find it and to get to it. But it's not impossible! You can train yourself to be aware of the thoughts that go on in your unconscious mind. And to get what you want out of life it is a necessity to make the unconscious conscious. I think what Carl Jung ment was that there is no fate, there is only you. I agree! Do you?

Let's say you're carrying a tray of glasses, and somewhere in the back of your head you start to think that you will drop it. Sure thing you will! Or you overslept in the morning and the rest of the day you are trying to catch up and one after another things go wrong. You've been there, right?! This is not because you can't carry a tray and it is not because you are having a bad day. It is because in the back of your head, in your unconscious mind, you expect it to be that way. You can turn it around though, because you know that you are thinking something "bad", somewhere in your unconscious mind, by the way that you feel. If you're feeling stressed, insecure, angry, annoyed or any other negative feeling, you are thinking something negative. If that negative thought is not in your conscious mind it will be in your unconscious mind. Easy right? If you feel bad you're thinking something bad. And once you've established how you feel, you can start searching your unconscious for the bad thought. When you find it you're automatically making it a conscious thought and you can change it.

The first thing you need to do is to make a conscious decision to make your unconscious conscious . That is, if you want to be aware of where you're are leading yourself in life. After you've made that decision you need to start being aware of your feelings, at all times, small or big. If you wake up in the morning feeling grumpy, take a moment to figure out why, make the thought come up to the surface and turn it around. One thing you need be careful with, though, is that your brain can't understand negative words like no, never, not and so on. It will read your thought as an opposite one if it contains a negation. Think "This day will be a good day", rather than "This day will not be a bad day". If you take out  the word "not" in the latter it will read "This day will be a bad day" and that is the opposite of what you intended.

My day will be great! Will your day be great?