Time to wake up?

Life’s wake-up calls

Do you ever feel that life is coasting a long quite nicely when suddenly something unexpected gets in your way that really needs your attention. When that wake up call appears do you hit the snooze button?

Maybe it’s not the right time for you to deal with it, or you’re too scared to do anything about it or you wish it would go away cos you just don’t have the energy to deal with it right now. However, if you just keep on hitting the snooze button then all you’re doing is creating a bigger problem and postponing the inevitable.

Old fashioned alarm clock — Photo Credit: FreeImages.com/Dmitry Mayatskyy

Can you imagine what harm this does to your body over a prolonged period of time?

I was speaking with a friend recently who told me how stressed she was about a situation at work. Somebody new had come on board to join her team and she felt her position in the team was being threatened. For a few weeks I heard her tell other people that it was on her mind all the time – it was affecting her sleep, she was feeling uptight physically and she was tense every time she went to work.

I asked her if she has spoken to her boss. The answer was “no”. She said that he was about to go on holiday and would be back in a couple of weeks. She had made up her mind she would speak to him when he got back.

I helped her to consider what this delay was doing to her emotionally, mentally, physically and possibly even nutritionally. This amount of stress was affecting her own performance hugely.

However, despite the pain it caused her she was prepared to hold on to all this stress rather than initiate a conversation that could potentially change how she was feeling about the situation. So big was her fear about the confrontation itself that she was hurting herself.

We did some work around the issue and once she realized what she was doing to herself she decided not to hit the snooze button any more!

Girl in bed under duvet — Photo Credit: FreeImages.com/Andrew Richards

With renewed clarity she took back control and reminded herself that she had the courage and strength to handle this situation. By taking back responsibility for how she was feeling she called her boss and managed to schedule a meeting before his holiday. She was able to talk about how she was feeling and agreed a way forward with an appropriate timescale.

She had just saved herself a couple of weeks of physical, emotional, mental and nutritional torment! Her relief was tangible – just imagine how her life would now be played out over the next 2 weeks without this stress? What good things could she have pushed away because of all the negativity she was feeling?

It’s amazing to think about the things we create in life that just need to be dealt with to enable us to move on freely.

What’s stressing you out right now that you could potentially address immediately?

The next time you are about to hit that snooze button to avoid life’s wake up call, please stop and think for a moment.