Developing Awareness of Your Stress Triggers Through Blogging

"Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change." - Stephen Covey

People are creatures of habit. Most of us don’t realize it, but many of the daily stresses you encounter in life tend to be due to the same triggers we all, as humans, face daily. 

It could be slow moving traffic that you have to sit in daily to get to and from work. Or it could be the neighbor’s dog that is barking at all times of the day. It could even be your spouse’s cooking, though you might want to stay silent about that for your own safety.

The point is this – if you don’t know what your stress triggers are, you’ll not know how to mitigate the problem. One of the best ways to discover what’s eating at you daily will be to start a blog. Blogging just might be the stress relief solution you’re looking for.

Details are everything

A blog is like a journal. Only difference is that you’re typing instead of writing. The benefit of this is that you’ll be able to conveniently access your blog anywhere with a mobile device, unlike a journal which you’ll need to carry around. 

The principles are the same. You’ll need to write down the details of your day daily on your blog. You can choose to keep the settings private so that only you can see them.

By being as detailed as possible, you’ll have more data to analyze. For example, if you find that you’re stressed out at work after talking to a particular colleague, you should indicate this on your blog.

Over time, by looking at your blog posts, you may notice that you keep feeling this way whenever the colleague is around you. This will indicate that he/she is triggering your stress. You’ll need to avoid them.

Be time conscious

For the first 2 or 3 weeks, you may wish to write down what you do every hour. Operate in hourly blocks. Record it all down on your blog posts.

After 3 weeks, you’ll be able to see where you’re being productive and where time is being frittered away. If you’re constantly struggling to meet deadlines, it could be that you’re not as productive as you should be.

Look at your blog posts and see where you can make changes to increase your output at work. By increasing your productivity, you won’t have to procrastinate until a week's worth of work is due in 12 hours, and your stress levels will decrease considerably.

Study patterns

The whole purpose of blogging to discover your stress triggers depends on you analyzing your posts and discovering patterns. You may find that you’re more irritable when you sleep less.

Or maybe certain foods cause you to feel uneasy and less than optimal. Maybe certain TV shows affect your moods. You’ll only discover your stress triggers when you look at the patterns in your life.

How can you fix it?

Once you know the stress triggers, your job will be to eliminate them or if they can’t be totally eliminated, then you’ll need to see how to circumnavigate them. You might choose to eat cleaner foods if junk food makes you feel bad.

You may choose to go to bed earlier if a lack of sleep makes you irritable the next day. You may even try to avoid your mother-in-law if she constantly gets on your nerves.

Your course of action will depend upon the trigger and your personality. Use blogging as a tool to uncover the subtle and hidden triggers that cause you to be frazzled and stressed out. You can’t go wrong with it.

Agape
The Nocturnal Therapist

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