Caroline Cavanagh suggests asking "what is reasonable?" when others' actions stress you out. Wedding shoes cost more than regular shoes, and Valentine's roses spike in price, because sellers see profit opportunities in occasions. Stepping into their perspective often lowers your stress, even if you still think they're unreasonable.
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Hi there, it's Caroline Cavanagh, and I'm here now with tip number 16 of my stress-busting advent calendar of tips. And this one is something that I'm sure a lot of you can relate to. It's about asking yourself, what is reasonable? Now, often a lot— a big source of stress can be, oh, that's so unreasonable! He did that, she did that, it's unreasonable! And the basis of this tip is to actually step back and actually look at that person's reason behind why they were acting where they were. So I can remember at times, you know, when I was getting married, a white pair of shoes was like 3 times the cost of exactly the same pair of shoes as black because they were wedding shoes. Similarly, the cost of roses will be, you know, 3, 4 times the price In the middle of February than they will do at any other time of the year. And often again you go, that's so unreasonable! But look at it from the seller's perspective. If they're in the wedding business, they know that a bride will pay an awful lot more for something because it's for my wedding. Similarly, people will spend a lot more money on roses on Valentine's Day because of the occasion. And if you were in that business, chances are you would do the same because it's an opportunity to make profit within your business, and it may be one of very few opportunities throughout the year. And when you put it in someone else's, or when you see it from someone else's perspective, it can often help change your view on things. And when that view changes, the associated stress can often change too. Now, this is one of the ones that, um, Sometimes it can be really powerful because it's a case of, ah yeah, I'd never thought of it that way. And as soon as you like take that, flip that view and see it from the other direction, you then can't flip it back and just see it from yours. It's there, it's on your radar, and it will change your stress levels. Sometimes, in all honesty, you will look at it from the other person's point of view and still go, yeah, I get it, but it's still unreasonable. But at least you've tried. And even in that thought process, The chances are your stress levels will have dropped down just a little bit. So this tip is more specific to certain situations and probably more poignant to things where the stress levels aren't quite so high. So in all of these tips that I'm sharing across Advent, I'm aiming to give you a whole range of ones. The one that I did last was one of my 3 emergency first aid tips for when things are really, really at that critical point— high, high levels of stress. That allows you to just go down a degree or two to then bring in some of these others. I've shared some tips that are really good at kind of preventing that stress building up in the first place. If you would like to access all of the tips, there's an ebook that is freely downloadable from my website, which is carolinecavanagh.co.uk. Pop over to the resources page and you'll see free ebook, 30 Stress Busting Tips. Throughout Advent, I am aiming to share one every day. I've missed a couple of days, but I will catch up, promise. Which will mean that there will be 24 short videos like this one on Facebook, and also they're being uploaded to YouTube as well. So again, you can catch up on any of them, refer back to them, pick out the ones that really work for you, because my aim is by sharing these tips to help people have more resources. We can't change the stress out there in the outside world, but what we can do is to control how we react to it. And that's very much what these tips are all about, is you being in control of how you feel about these things. Because when you're in control, you choose whether you get stressed about it or not, and that is one of the most empowering things that you can do. So I hope this tip has been useful to you. I will be back tomorrow with tip number 17. We're flying through them all. And for anyone that's kind enough to share the post, or for anyone that is prepared to like the page. They're all things that help more people to learn about these tools, and the more people that are resourced to manage the stress, the less stress there is going to be out there for all of us to bounce off of. So, as I say, if you're prepared to share the post, to like the page, I'm going to put all of those names in a hat and draw one out just after Christmas and offer those people an opportunity to work with me one-to-one with my compliments as my way of saying thank you for helping me to help others. But for now, over and out, and I will be back tomorrow with the next one. Have a great evening. Bye-bye.
