step, after recognizing individual behavior patterns, is the rethinking. Some of the methods presented in this book will help you create a new perspective on immutable situations. In addition, you can consider which reaction you can use to make stressful situations less stressful.
The stress protocol, for example, has shown that you are always particularly irritated at lunchtime. This may be due to a lack of morning snack and a short break at the beginning of the lunch break. And instead of talking to the belligerent colleague at lunchtime, you could politely make her understand that at a later stage you are willing to resolve possible conflicts. Fixed behaviors are not always immediately recognizable, which is why a stress protocol can be a strong help to show these unconscious and almost intuitive behaviors.
Gratitude and pleasure
We are often so tense that we mostly forget to be grateful and enjoy, but these are exactly two attitudes that enrich our lives unbelievably. Maybe you've had the same experience before: They rush from one appointment to the next and therefore have no time to enjoy the wonderful weather or the grandiose food. The more we are under stress and put ourselves under pressure, the less time we take to enjoy and be grateful for the little things in life that make life so worth living.
The art of feeling gratitude and being able to enjoy moments seriously is an expression of inner balance. Sometimes it is enough to charge yourself with these powerful, positive emotions by consciously enjoying a tea during lunch break or by being grateful to see the squirrels climbing the trees. You can make it a habit to let this gratitude and the pleasure move back into your everyday life. Take a little time in the next days or weeks in the evening and think about the course of the day: Which moments of your everyday life deserved a little more attentiveness and gratitude, which moments could you have enjoyed more? Make a point of paying more attention to these aspects of your everyday life. By remembering it daily, your consciousness will soon be ready for gratitude and enjoyment in everyday life as well.
You may feel that you do not deserve to indulge yourself or enjoy something. Put this way of thinking aside, because it has nothing to do with reality and is merely an expression of unhealthy ways of thinking that urgently need to make room for new ways of thinking. The most popular excuse is then "I don't have time to enjoy this moment or show gratitude for it." This is not entirely true, because you set the priorities for your life and if it is one of your priorities to be more mindful of the beautiful sides of life, then you have time enough. Your current everyday life certainly has many beautiful moments of pleasure in store for you, but how about you spoil yourself consciously? Think about what enjoyment means to you. Is it the undisturbed time alone in a café or is it staying in a bookstore? Build more situations into your everyday life, which you fill with great gratitude!
Methods for a stronger inner balance: Everyday structures
Changing everyday structures can cause major changes on a mental and emotional level. In this chapter you will get to know some possibilities for changing everyday structures. This includes the linguistic structure, the structuring of your goals and tasks, as well as your usual approaches to these tasks. Of course there are many more possibilities to make your everyday life more relaxed and effective and you will find the right changes for you on your own as your inner balance progresses.
We are human beings, we develop and grow constantly, our needs are subject to change, but once we have completed our schooling, many of us lose the flexibility and adaptation of everyday life to our own needs. Growing demands from work, family and leisure are becoming an ever tighter net, which permits only little adjustment - unless we act very actively and consciously in exactly this direction. People act habitually in order to make everyday life easier for themselves.
However, it is fundamentally important and healthy to question these structures from time to time and, if necessary, to rearrange them. Especially in times in which we do not feel optimally balanced, the change of everyday structures can become an effective means. First read through the proposed optimization measures and then decide which of these changes will inspire you the most right away. Of course, you do not have to stop according to one method, but can gradually enrich your everyday structures with the various methods.
The word "must" and its relatives
The word "must" puts most people under pressure. And that's not surprising either, after all, it's clearly a challenge with an almost compelling character. The word "should" also has this message. We are often asked by the outside world to say the word "must": "The documents must be ready by the evening". Or "We have to go to the wedding from XY to Munich." And often, without hesitation, we adopt exactly this message in this compulsive form, although there is only in very few cases a vital reason for it.
Much worse, however, is when we adopt this attitude and put ourselves and other people under equal pressure with our "must" demands: "I have to have this task done by tomorrow." The word "must" does not necessarily have a positive connotation and so we should simply delete it from our vocabulary. Also terms like "problem", "difficulty" or "impossible" (and many more) point us to one thing in particular: To our supposed limits. All these negatively connotated terms do not really contribute to our relaxation and accordingly we should exchange them. Part one of this method is to pay close attention in the next week to the contexts in which you use terms with negative connotations.
Ideally you should write these words down, because the second part of this method is about finding positive alternatives for these words and using them consciously in everyday life. For example, "problems" then become "challenges", the lawn "doesn't have to" be mown (which it really doesn't have to...), but "could" or "may" be mown. And so the "food problem" becomes a "change in diet" and many more opportunities open up. Our language is an expression of our thoughts and we have the possibility to perceive our thoughts more attentively by a more conscious handling of our language, to change them in this way. These changed trains of thought will have a positive effect on your mood, motivation and balance!
"No!" say
Saying "No!" is incredibly difficult for many people, but why is that so? You can probably imagine the answer: Our fears. Let's first look at why saying "no" is fundamentally important. Every time we take on a task that doesn't match our needs, we should have said "no". The fact that we nevertheless take on these tasks means that we take on ourselves. Instead of weighing up which tasks we can take on in the context of our own health in good conscience and without stress, we focus on the needs and ideas of other people. For fear of losing prestige, endangering relationships or missing professional opportunities, we limit ourselves, ignore our needs, and put ourselves in the background in our own lives.
Observe the next few weeks very closely as you make your decisions. Many decisions have become routine and can therefore no longer be recognized as decisions. For example, it has become normal that you pay for lunch with your colleague or drive to the end of town for errands for relatives. We make thousands of decisions every day and many of them have become routine, so that we can master our everyday life at all. It would be terrible if we actually had to consider whether this is the right way to go at the slightest effort. This exercise is mainly about the bigger decisions.
At best, you write down your decisions the moment you make them. At first you will only notice a few decisions, but this will become more with increased attention. Then, in a quiet minute, consider why you made the decision and whether you are actually happy with your decision making. What alternative choices would there have been and what would have contributed to your balance? The more aware you become of your choices and needs, the more often you can make healthy decisions.
Abolish multitasking
Yes, multitasking seems like the perfect way to combine as many tasks as possible. But let's be honest: How effective are you when you do four tasks at the same time? In the
