We all have moments of stress, and sometimes those moments can grow to seem overwhelming. How we manage those moments can sometimes tear us apart, or if we’re lucky, bring us closer together.
For Flower developer Mat Trudel and his wife Justine, that moment started with a leak that wouldn’t quit, and then grew with the cancer diagnosis of his infant daughter. As they focused on their daughter’s illness, they also had to contend with being out of their home and then unbelievably, the loss of their household goods in a fire.
Mat, Justine and Margot today.
Mat, Justine and their daughter came through the other side of all these disasters with a fresh realization of the importance of family and a renewed sense of closeness. As they remind each other, “Aren’t we lucky?”
Hopefully most of us will never have to deal with the level of anxiety that Mat and his family faced. However, even life’s smaller, day-to-day stresses can be met with some basic mindsets to help us stay calm and successfully navigate the turmoil. A recent article by Lifehacker points to 10 things you can do when faced with stress:
- Remain positive
- Avoid caffeine
- Make jokes
- Identify the stressor
- Decompress
- Reframe the situation
- Make a plan
- Get some sleep
- Ask for help
- Mentally prepare