A question posed - “I very much need to develop a way of dealing with stress. I used to have what i called the “fuck it level”, but for some reason that disappeared in my early 30s.”

Hmmmm. I may be able to help you better manage this. The two key things you need to keep firmly in mind are:

1) Adopt a mental state of ‘care, but don’t care too much’. Easier said than done I know – because you’ve gotta care a little as this is what makes you potentially good at what you do but you have to insulate yourself… how do you do this? Go to step two…

2) Determine what falls into your realm of direct influence and what clearly does not. I used to have a little post it on my pc monitor that said “T.I.N.O.M.C.” which stood for ‘this is not of my concern’. I like to imagine a little barista robot with TINOMC stamped across his chest making small sausages… but naturally TINOMOC can be whoever you like.

….ok well that’s all well and good… other than the robot thing which is kinda disturbing… but give us some tools to de-stress…

Two tools – one, when someone or some situation is ‘raining’ down on your mojo/vibe I’d imagine myself standing under a tropical waterfall, feeling the water cascade over me…sometimes I’d drift a little and imagine Brooke Shields naked standing next to me cooing “oooh your such a manly man..it’s been sooo long…like you”

The second tool is determining what people involved in a projects ‘want’s’ and ‘needs’ are and addressing only those that directly impact on you.

For example, the only person you really need to please is probably your direct boss, everyone else is kinda elective pro-bono work on your part. Ok – it’s more complicated than that, I hear you, but in a sense it isn’t really.

A good way to manage stress and also filter your work/demands on you is to escalate those items you know you can slamdance all over but the key here is to attaché a greater organisational critical importance to them being knocked over and those items that have ‘tears written all over it’ – adopt a passive aggressive mode in adding it to the priority list but constantly inserting other just as important things above it.

I work on the theory that if someone has asked me more than three times to do something – then that’s as good as it gets in terms of flagging that this is really important to them (not necessarily me) as opposed to the other flickeroo stuff that is sent your way. The more important it is to them that you complete it the more ‘power’ or ‘hand’ you have as their saviour…

Remember – utter (silently please) to yourself “it’s like a freakin’ waterfall washing all that nastiness away” and the other one ‘this is not of my concern’…. and think of Brooke stepping out from her waterfall with a slow smile spreading across her face as she approaches you….