I worked through a stressful situation with a client once that I could empathize with all too well. It was her pile. The pile itself was not the cause of her stress, it was all of her thoughts about the pile. “What is in there that I should have taken care of?” “How am I going to deal with it if I am late on something in that pile?” “What problems are lurking in that pile that I have ignored?” We talked through those underlying fears and then I asked her how she would feel if the pile were just gone. The big relief was obvious in her voice; she was being weighed down like that pile weighed a ton!
We talked through what she needed to do to get rid of the pile and keep it from coming back. She came up with a plan to allocate 15 minutes each day (her schedule was very full) to going through the pile and just listing what was there and then to start working the list. Of course, the list helped reduced the stress a lot because most of it was her imagination of what could be there. Your imagination is very powerful, both for the good and the bad. She then took additional steps to get rid of it and avoid it coming back in the future.
One of my “piles” right now is purchasing a new laptop and transferring everything from my current older laptop. If you love playing with technical things then this is not a stress pile for you; for me it is a small one that I just need to get done (that fear of my current lap top crashing lingers in the back of my mind and sometimes my imagination makes it into a much heavier pile).
Is there a pile of some sort in your life that is weighing you down? Take a minute and imagine how it will feel when you are rid of it. What small step can you take toward removing your pile to thrive more this week? Go do it.
photo credit to rosipaw via Flickr creative commons