How full is your Stress Mug?

According to UK HSE stress statistics, over 13 million working days are lost every year because of stress.  With a huge 70% of visits to doctors and 85% of serious illnesses thought to have been caused by stress.  Is it any wonder that we fill up on medication just to get through the day.

I like to give my clients an example to help them understand why they have to release their daily stresses and anxieties.  It’s all too common for us to work, work, work and not give ourselves any de-stress time.  This can sometimes be a live or die situation.

Imagine your stress levels as a mug of coffee.  This is your stress mug.  When the mug is empty you have no stress, when the mug is full you are brimming with stress.

Everyone of us start our day with some coffee in our mug, this is underlying stress from past events that is normally undetected because we no longer recognise it as a stress. 

From the time we wake up our stress levels are on the up, all it takes is to wake up late, miss your first cup of coffee, run out of cigarettes, get stuck in traffic, be late for a meeting/get kids to school, have too much to do, eat badly, not drink enough water….you get my picture.  Before we know it the tiny things have filled our coffee mug until it is half full, YIKES!  Finally we go to bed and get ready to tackle the next day.  

The next day we go through the whole process again but this time we have an unexpected situation arise and our stress levels almost fill our coffee mug.  By day 3, we’re so grateful it’s the week-end that we have a lie in, we take it easy, we have a great day and then all of a sudden we break a glass and that’s it, our coffee mug has overflowed and our inner volcano erupts.  At this point it really wouldn’t matter what would have happened, your coffee mug as simply overflowed with nowhere for it to go, other than to cause an explosion. 

Now I’m not saying this has happened to you, but I’m sure you know someone who has experienced an overflowing coffee mug

So what can you start doing immediately to keep your coffee inside your mug?

There are a range to choose from, however, I must point out that ALL of them will require you to change some or all aspects of your life.  Over the following days I will be giving you some tips on how you can keep your mug half full!