At the Bend

 

COPING WITH TIME-RELATED STRESS Those of us who try to juggle the roles of wife, mother, volunteer, and/or employee simultaneously often experience the problem of not having enough time to meet our obligations. We try to plan daily schedules based on the time that is available to accomplish certain activities. Often, however, the allotted time doesn’t match our responsibilities and the resultant stress can be a silent enemy to our health and well-being both physically and mentally. There are steps that we can take to reduce such time-related stress. (1) (1) Determine the Present Level of Stress and Discover Ways to Reduce It. We can assess where the pressures are coming from in our lives. If    they are time-related, we can learn to say “no” to future demands on our time in areas over which we do have control. (There is probably another person who can bake brownies for the class party, transport the soccer team occasionally, or assume a committee leadership role.) We can also set realistic time allotments in other areas. (2)  Learn How to Relax Mind & Body Engaging in exercise, hobbies, or anything else that will give us a change of pace from our normal schedule may help us to relax. We can try to sit quietly for about 20 minutes, read a book, or listen to music. It is important to find time for us in our busy schedules, and not to feel guilty that we are taking a few minutes for ourselves. We especially need to do things over which we do have control, as opposed to things at work or with the family over which we feel we do not have control. (3)  Learn How to Organize Time More Effectively It may be necessary to slow our pace of living for  our own well-being. We should set time frames for our activities and realize we can’t always do everything we’re asked to do. There are only 24 hours in a day for everyone, although it is sometimes easy to lose sight of this fact. A balance of activities is a route to stress reduction, and proper time organization is essential in order to be able to have this balance. The Scriptures, poetry, and a presidential speech have all addressed the problem of stress. We are advised in Hebrews 12:1 to “…run with patience the particular race that God has set before us.” (Living Bible). The renowned nineteenth century poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, also gave advice on patience in his poem of the same title.(2) “Let us, then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate;  Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.” With our propensity for “busyness” in our lives, it would be easy to fulfill the observation by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt some 60 years ago during one of his Fireside Chats.: “Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.” (3) Would awareness of the phrase “so little time” in the last  sentence help us to realize that some activities that we in our roles as wives, mothers, and employees rationalize as relaxation really contribute to our stress too as we try to juggle our busy schedules to do it all? Perhaps we could learn a lesson from a woman on an island in Western Lake Erie where residents are icebound in the winter. Their only transportation is a daily flight to the mainland. One resident summed up her time-related stress reduction method quite succinctly: “I’ve learned over the years there isn’t anything so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow’s flight.” (4) Learning how to wait for “tomorrow’s flight” may be our best weapon for combating time-related stress. REFERENCES “Stress Can Squeeze Years Off Your Life if You Don’t Know How to Handle It.”, Brochure prepared in the public interest by Liberty National Life Insurance Company, Birmingham, AL.   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “Patience”, Leaves of Gold, Rev. Ed., Clyde Francis Lytle, Editor, Williamsport, PA: The Coslett Publishing Co. (1952) p. 12.   Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Sixteenth Ed., Justin Kaplan, Gen. Ed., Boston: Little, Brown & Co. (1992) p. 649.   Engel, Margaret, “The Little Airline of the Lake,” Air & Space Smithsonian. (Feb/Mar 1987) p. 56.   Annie Laura Smith has over 140 publications, and is an instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature. Books in her World War II historical trilogy The Legacy of Bletchley Park, Will Paris Burn? and Saving da Vinci), are available from PCPublications. She recently edited WE ARE CALLED: the 50-Year History of Trinity United Methodist Church (Huntsville, AL.) published in 2005.