Power point

1) Assess your stress

· Assess your stress begins with looking at what your physiological stressors are and how much their affecting your mental and physical state every day.

· I selected this assessment because I think a good place to start is to show yourself the big effect that all these small stressors may be causing.

· I uncovered things that I was pretty aware of already I have had past experiences in life that forced me to us this assessment long before. Although I do still use it every so often to reassess and evaluate how I am doing overall.

2) Symptoms of stress

· This assessment helps you see how you have been allowing stress to affect you and your body and the long-term effects it has caused.

· I decide to choose this assessment because I knew that there were a few symptoms of stress that I experience daily such as; difficulty sleeping, jaw pain, and headaches and I wanted to see just how many I deal with daily.

· I uncovered that although I pride myself on managing my stressors very well they were still affecting me in ways that I was trying to play off as not stress related.

3) Perceived stress scale

· This scale is a better understanding of how each individual perceives the stress that they run into daily and whether or not they allow the situations to control their mental state.

· I selected this assessment because it fell perfectly into my findings of the other assessments and how I was looking at my stress. That although I saw my stressors I acknowledged the stress however, I neglected to manage my coping.

· With this assessment I believe that I have become very proficient with the ways I view stressors. There have been many events already in my life that I used to think “why me” and pull only negative. Now I am able to have anything occur and turn it into a positive situation.

4) Tombstone test (page 26)

· The tombstone test is a great way to shock people into realizing the way they are living by asking simple questions such as, how do you want to be remembered.

· I chose this assessment because I couldn’t agree more with this one. While I believe that I am a realist instead of a pessimist or optimist and I 100% support asking questions that make people have to think, because no one is ever expecting of the honesty, and I believe honesty bring the best self-assessments.

· I did not uncover anything about this assessment yet that I did not already know. I have forced learned to force myself to make these choices about who I am and what I am doing daily when instead of letting stress control my whole life.

My results from assessing my stress were very intuitive, I learned that what the little things are that I deal with daily that bring me stress. Although I manage large stressors very well today in my life, I needed to assess the smaller ones to really be able to understand where stress was still unmanaged. No, these results did not really surprise me, I was aware that there were stressors that made me respond in certain ways however, I was a little unwilling to try to find where they were coming from. I agree this assessment really helped me step back to find the small things in life that were keeping me from being able to be in complete control of the management of all of my daily stress. The overall impact was great, I feel like a new person it is amazing how freeing up the small corners of your brain can allow so much calm and relaxation when doing daily things that would have normally seemed overwhelming or stressful.

The results I found from looking into the symptoms of my stress were a little shocking. A lot of the daily stress that I was overlooking was affecting me in small ways that were beginning to add up and cause damage that I was overlooking. Such as my frequent headaches, jaw aches, losing sleep, etc. These results were a little surprising and upsetting, I was shocked to see how much stress was affecting me without me even realizing it. I agree with my results and I am very happy that I now see what was wrong and the underlying problem to my small stress. The overall impact was quite impressive. I am getting better sleep I enjoy taking rides now and I am having less and less headaches, just overall positive impacts.

When I began with the perceived stress scale my results were along the lines of what I expected. My results for this assessment did not surprise me at all and I greatly agree. After a few events happened in my life I was from then on able to step back and assess the way I was beginning to become a victim. I did not want to wake up and look at what was bad I wanted to wake up be happy and look for ways to turn bad into good. I choose this assessment because it is something I try to teach to my family and friends daily, learning to find the positive is a life changing habit that is easier than most to adapt.

When I did the Tombstone test I had pretty normal results as to what I thought I would get. They did not surprise me I am very aware of these aspects that these assessments help you see. I agree I very much enjoyed this assessment as I stated earlier I am a realist and I very much enjoy instances such as this that allow individuals to hear the truth. How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be remembered as someone who was always negative, someone who couldn’t manage their stress or didn’t want to try, as someone who was always angry and never really stopped to enjoy life? When I did this assessment, my overall impact was impressive. I was very happy with what this test helped me realize and how it helped me in moving forward to help perfect my outlook on life and the ways I could use it to motivate myself to be and do better.

My targeted behavioral challenges for me dealt with my physical health and my emotional health. For my physical health I wanted to improve on my eating habits and to stay more consistent with my working out habits. For my emotional health I wanted to work on being better at controlling my anger and being able to remain calm. With my physical change I have identified what aspects that I would need to work on to help these changes. For my eating habits I developed a journal did a breakdown of what I should be in taking daily based off my age weight and health. After this is signed up for a daily work out plan and schedule for my gym routines. For my emotional health I identified the most common instances where I felt that my anger was getting the best of me. I used a journal to measure both progression on my physical and emotional health. Throughout these two weeks I kept track of how well I was maintaining my eating habits as well as my workout routines. I also included each day how my progress was affecting me and helping my mental state. This progression had an extremely large impact on my behavioral state. As I continued on with my healthy eating and work out plans I began to feel unstoppable. At first, like every new start normally, it was rough and took a lot of discipline to stay strong. However, once I started sticking to these plans I set for myself it became a lot easier for me to be able to make these decisions almost without any thought at all. Once I was feeling good about my choices I was starting to notice changes I was seeing the weight drop as well as the inches. Which lead me to feel more motivation to stay strong and also boosted my mentality and how I overall felt each day because I knew these little steps in consistency was greatly benefitting my long-term goals. With my emotional challenge I measured this with a journal as well, whenever an instance arrived when I would normally get upset I would log after the trip or instance was over. I did not want to log during because I didn’t want a constant reminder to be something I needed to be able to make this mental adjustment. I also measured by mentally preparing myself for what may happen before going into a situation. For example, I struggle with driving in the town I currently live in because in all honesty the individuals with licenses in this town should not be driving. That aside I have to overcorrect myself for others mistakes to avoid for a minimum of 2 accidents every time I get on the road. Normally I would let myself be upset about these instances however, while working on my emotional health I began to mentally prepare by doing things to calm myself and my mindset prior to anything happening. This impacted my behavior greatly I was very surprised by the improvement in my attitude and the difference made through the whole trip. After trying this technique, I have gotten to the point where I do not need to focus so hard on getting ahead of anger and instead I find myself being more relaxed even after an instance happens. The impact has been tremendous on my emotional health I feel overall so much happier and I don’t dread leaving my house or feel overwhelmed to get behind the wheel. This all relates closely to class discussion in my opinion because the discussions are examples of being able to dive into our own minds to figure out how they run best and take control. Each article has been a small part of a big picture and allowed us to evaluate ourselves based off facts and better assess what we want our outcome to be and how to get there.

In conclusion the most significant thing that I learned is that no matter how well you know and manage your stress it is important to reevaluate yourself frequently and accept the little stressors you have in order to learn them and best figure out to manage and grow from them.

Cite source

Hesson, O. (2016) Stress Management for Life. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.