Unwind!: 7 Principles for a Stress-Free Life by Michael Olpin & Sam Bracken

Author:Michael Olpin & Sam Bracken [Olpin, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Harbor Press
Published: 2014-08-05T06:00:00+00:00

“Easy for you to say,” we can hear you thinking. “The reason I’m overloaded is that I have to do all these things. On top of a full-time job, I’m going to school at night, and then there’s laundry, and my boyfriend is always complaining I don’t have time for him, and my mother loads guilt on me for not calling her more often . . .”

From Sam:

As a college football player, you soon learn that a game is one bewildering battle after another. Preparation is essential, but there are so many people doing so many things so fast—many of them unpredictable—that you can get overwhelmed in a split second. Today, everyone’s life is like that. How did we learn to deal with the complexity?

We were taught that we had primary responsibilities and secondary responsibilities. Never sacrifice the primary for the secondary. My primary responsibility was to block the opposing linebacker, and his responsibility was to attack my quarterback. My job was to stop him. Of course, I could be doing a lot of other jobs—helping the center if he was about to get squashed, for example. But I could not get distracted by those secondary jobs.

If we didn’t know what was primary and what was secondary, we’d get confused trying to do everything. And in football, if you hesitate for a split second about what job to do, you’re burned.

An even higher priority was schoolwork. Above all, we were student athletes. Academics first, athletics second. I remember a young starting player with a great talent—everyone said he’d be a professional someday—who lost sight of that priority. Georgia Tech was a demanding school, and because he didn’t put first things first, he had to leave. He could have had an amazing career, but he did not get his priorities straight.

Prioritizing means you have a lot less stress. Those priorities come from your value system. When there’s no question about what comes first and what comes second in your life, you can say no to secondary priorities and avoid the anxiety that comes from being overwhelmed with the complexity of life.

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