Priorities Part 3: What Needs to Change?

• Posted on September 23, 2016
• by Michelle Doetsch
• in Self Care, Stress
• Comments Off on Priorities Part 3: What Needs to Change?

It’s not enough to know what’s stressing you out; you also have to know what needs to change in regards to those stressors. For instance, would it be enough to change departments or shifts at work or do you need to work for a totally different company?

Here’s where the work of the last 2 Priorities Posts pays off. Here’s the first one – Setting Priorities to Reduce Stress in case you missed it.

To do this right, you’re going to need the chart you created last time. If you didn’t create a chart, here’s the post you need to do it: Priorities Part 2: The Cost Benefit Analysis. Got it? Good.

Now, take a look at the Analysis column. Which choices have a bigger cost than benefit? Mark those in some way so they stand out – I like to use a highlighter, but you can circle them, put a mark next to them, or whatever else works for you to be able to pick them out easily.

Which of these high cost choices can you change by yourself? Which will require help of some sort from someone else? (We’ll address this question more in depth in the next post.)

Which of these need to be changed the most, i.e. which one has the highest cost to your stress or pain level?

Your homework until next time is to prioritize the things that need to change in 2 ways:

• First – Prioritize them in order of magnitude with #1 being the one with the highest cost to your stress and/or pain levels.
• Second – Put them in order of the ease with which you can change them, with #1 being the easiest to change.

Now the $64,000 question: Which of these are you willing to change? Don’t wait for me to tell you which criteria to use to determine what you’ll change. I’m not going to do that. I’m just giving you some tools so that you can see things a bit more objectively and notice any patterns when it comes to your stressors.