Day Seventy Eight!!

Do you feel burned out? I did for sure today. Stress is a huge emotional component. Using your emotional intelligence allows you to be able to react with emotions, which is a form of thinking through your emotions. We all need to have that emotional centre to be able to make rational decisions but, when our emotional centre is knocked out, we can no longer make rational decisions. 


There are four components to emotional intelligence; 

1. To be able to identify what you are feeling, looking deeper than just surface reactions.
2. Being able to look at different points of view in order to help solve the complicated feeling of multiple emotions, in order to solve problems.
3. Learning not only to be able to understand the emotions that are being felt in terms of shades of grey, not black or white, and then being able to change your emotions. This leads to being able to manage the emotions that are being felt, in order to be able to determine whether an emotion is appropriate, to respond with an appropriate response.

So here is a stress test to see if you are experiencing burn out. The more ‘yes’ answers, then the closer you are going to be experiencing burn out. Stress is experienced when we feel like we are not in control, so the more you feel that your locus or centre of control is within yourself then the more you will be able to manage stress. The more you feel your locus or control is without or outside of yourself, then the more easily you will feel like you do not have control. The feeling of not having control, will result in an increased stress response about life circumstances that are not within your control.

1. Do you feel worn down?
2. When you think about the demands in your life do you feel anger?
3. Do you feel overwhelm?
4. Do you explode at trivial issues?
5. Do you have headaches, gastrointestinal distress, insomnia? 
6. Do you take unnecessary risks?
7. Do you feel stressed out?

Today I can honestly say I felt four. What the most important thing is to remember, is to be able to use your stress to work for you. For example; helping you to make deadlines and make tough decisions. But when stress starts to adversely effect your health, then that means that you need to take an assessment of your life circumstances. So, you need to feel like you are in control of your journey, instead of your journey being in control of you. Developing a system of strategies and attitudes to help relieve stress, which will in turn allow you to be able to remain in control, and process emotions cooly, calmly, and logically, so that there is no need to stress eat. 


The key is to be able to eliminate some of your major worries in order to be able to change your behaviour, to make your environment better, to decrease stress levels, instead of trying to escape your problems. Take stock of your life, make changes to lower stress, and the results will help you to be able to maintain emotional intelligence with your diet.


When I arrived home, I spent some time creating a great low carb snack, and that made me feel like I was in control and I can honestly say I actually felt special and de-stressed.