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So, after agreeing to support my wife (Sandra) with her visits to the gym, I found myself lacking motivation to go yesterday. I’d already trained 5 times during the week, with a couple of quite tough sessions, I felt I’d done enough!

I knew that if it looked like I wasn’t interested, Sandra would arrange to do something else, like the housework or ironing, so I just got ready for the gym and we went. As always, I was glad we went and we both felt better afterwards and still had time to do all the things we needed to do.

As the day started unfolding, I found my stress levels rising steadily due to some issues with the foster kids. This was exacerbated as it also impacted the rest of the family, specifically Sandra and, as you will all know, if your partner is stressed, you are stressed and the if issue is not going away, it can get heated.

These emotions were compounded when Liverpool lost to Brighton (Stupid to let sport wind you up, I know!) and Sandra looked at me and said “Let’s go for a walk along the beach”. 

So, we got in the car and went to the beach. As we walked, we talked about the issues and discussed how we were going to approach things. We agreed what we needed to do and, more importantly, how we would support each other. We then stopped talking about it and enjoyed the walk. (We didn’t mention the Liverpool game).

The beach was quite busy and I wondered how many other people were there ‘letting off steam’ and re-aligning their emotions, I bet it was quite a few. When we got back home we got on with things and everything was calmer, which it wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t got out of the house.

As with everything in life, it’s good to have some awareness when things are being derailed or are starting to go astray. We were getting more annoyed, as the day went on, and if we hadn’t removed ourselves from the source of the stress, for a short time, it could have been a bad Sunday, probably ending with me and Sandra arguing.

I am sure you have all experienced something like this and maybe did something similar to decompress and let off steam. I am also sure that you have had experiences when you didn’t manage things well and it went horribly wrong, as I have. The skill is to recognise when it’s starting to ‘bubble up’ and deal with things before they explode.

Removing yourself from the stress and going for a walk, might not always be possible so having other strategies, to hand, is important so here are a few that spring to mind:

  • Using breathing techniques
  • Listen to music
  • Speak to someone (vent)
  • Exercise
  • Focus on getting a task completed
  • Read a couple of chapters of a book or watch a TED talk
  • Use YouTube to learn a new trick (Distraction)

The main thing is to recognise when your emotions are becoming unhelpful, then apply your strategy.

Have an amazing week – keep cool, stay calm! ????

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