Your Favourite Activity is a Key to Managing Stress
As I walked out of the office building towards my car, all I
could think about was the task that lay ahead of me the
following day. Being a product manager and architect for a
software company, there were always interesting challenges
presented to me. In this case it was finding a solution to a
complex issue experienced by a customer which had consumed most
of my time all day without a positive result. I was feeling
quite tired and drained, and was worried that I would not be
able to find a solution to the problem. I was starting to get
stressed.
Tonight was kung fu training night, the night I looked forward
to every week, but because I was totally preoccupied with the
problem I had no desire to go. I felt somewhat lethargic and I
just wanted to go straight home and eat dinner. Despite how I
felt, I decided to go anyway. I walked into the kung fu academy
and got changed into my gear. I then started to warm up before
the class doing the regular standard body stretch I always did.
As I stretched, all I could think about was work. It was really
consuming me.
Being one of the most senior students in the academy that night,
my teacher asked me to take the warm up for the class. Directing
a class of 20 students was the last thing I wanted to do. I
hesitantly started the class with some standard joint rotations,
followed by some light stretching, and then finally picked up
the pace with a little cardio including various punches and
kicks. Within 20 minutes, I had almost forgotten what had
happened at work and was feeling quite energetic. I then spent
the last 5 minutes of the warm up doing some really cool drills
that all the students liked. After a total of 25 minutes, the
class including myself was pumped ready to be taught some new
techniques by our teacher, and I was feeling great, having no
concerns about work what so ever. It was the last thing on my
mind.
The rest of the class was awesome. The teacher decided that we
were going to have an intense session of kicking the pads
followed by light sparring. By the end of the night, I was
dripping with sweat. Even though it was a hard workout, I no
longer felt lethargic. In fact I felt like I had more energy
than when I started.
As I walked out of the Kung Fu academy that night it dawned on
me how different my attitude was to the problem that lay ahead,
compared to when I first walked in that night one and half hours
before. It is amazing what impact, an activity that you love,
has on your mind set. I felt like I the problem that had
previously consumed me was now no big deal at all.
I ended up enjoying the rest of the night eating a light dinner
with my wife and relaxing with her in front of the TV. After a
restful sleep, the next morning I woke up with a few potential
solutions that had magically manifested over night. Sure enough
I had the problem solved within a couple of hours that day.