HOW DO YOU EAT AN ELEPHANT?
By John Madden, Grow Area Coordinator, Midlands Region
Is life more stressful in the modern era? Have we always been chasing our tails wishing for an extra hour in the day? Rushing to get places, meeting deadlines, worrying about bills, our health, how are the kids doing in school? Can I afford x, y, or z? It is all a bit much and the current issues around inflation and even post-Covid anxiety are rife across the country.
In the midlands, Stress Management Workshops are underway. A very successful one was run recently with the Longford/Westmeath ETB in Athlone. It was very well-attended and participants spoke highly of the experience afterward - a great start to the summer roll-out. Hopefully, we can mirror that success in the coming weeks.
Stress has always been part of society but the antecedents change, and it is becoming clear that there are many in the 2020s. A certain amount of it we do have control over, or maybe to say it better, we do have control over our reaction to it. So, what’s this elephant title about exactly? I ask it at the beginning of the Stress Management Workshop, a random and strange one you might think. We’ll come back to the answer towards the end of this.
In the workshop, a lot of key pieces of information are broached in an hour as we examine:
- What is Stress?
- What is causing it?
- What the heck is it doing to us in a holistic sense?
Participants of the workshop are often very intrigued to uncover what it is doing to them not just emotionally, but physically as well. Ultimately, many mental ill-health issues have a beginning, and it is clear that stress is certainly one of those catalysts. With that in mind, imagine a world where we were able to mitigate this type of trigger from the beginning rather than let it evolve into something far more complex. That’s one aim of the workshop; that we become more alert to it in ourselves and others around us, especially for the ducks out there. Another animal reference, where’s this going you might ask? We haven’t even answered the elephant question yet!
When talking of stress, we know only too well that many of us have an uncanny ability to hide behind a perceived façade of stoicism. We don’t always see it, people are like ducks – on the surface, bobbing along, often against the current and owe believe they have it all under control. The thing is, we don’t see them paddling wildly beneath the surface. They too need our attention. We don’t need to be forceful and confrontational, it could be something as arbitrary as inviting them for a tea and chat, the Irish way – “Put on the kettle, I have news!”.
So back to the elephant...of course, stress can be the elephant in the room. Anybody can say “Don’t worry” or “No need to get stressed about it” but that is as effective as me saying to you right now – DON’T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT. Let me guess, you just pictured an elephant. My point is simple – we tend to bundle a lot of stressful issues together and it becomes this amorphous blob of problems. The trick here is to untangle the threads and split them into smaller, bitesize chunks that you can work through, much like eating an elephant... one bite at a time. Always remember, you alone can do it, but you don’t have to do it alone.
Disclaimer: Grow does not endorse the consumption of elephants. So don’t do that. Please. 😉
