Stress Away is Harder Than Diffusing an Oil

 

Even before the pandemic hit, stress had always been a problem for many people.  The pandemic exacerbated it for some.  Many people had to try to figure out how to do their jobs or live their lives differently than they had ever thought about before.  Compounding that is the reality that the effects of this are not going away any time soon.  It is no different for youth leaders.  Youth ministry looks very different to some right now.  Some youth leaders have made the transition to ministry in the midst of a pandemic smoothly, while others are struggling.  Sometimes stress is something that can be avoided if we only had the right tools at our disposal.  Let me share with you one tool that may shrink stress in your ministry.

I read a book many years ago called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey.  In fact, it is so old that I have the cassette tape audio version of the book in my office.  One habit Covey talks about in his book is called "Put First Things First."  In that chapter he talks about drawing a horizontal line and a vertical line that intersect in the middle on a piece of paper, creating four quadrants.  Above the left column readers are to write "urgent."  Above the right column readers are to write "not urgent."  Then to the left of the top row write "important."  Finally, "not important" is to be written to the left of the bottom row.

The next step Covey urges his readers to do is to write out tasks in each quadrant based on how urgent and important they are.  For instance in the top left quadrant the tasks that are to be written down are both urgent and important.  The tasks to be written in the bottom right quadrant are both not urgent and not important and so on and so forth.

Early on in my ministry I wrote this out at the beginning of every week.  I found myself comfortable in the bottom right quadrant.  It was like pulling teeth doing tasks in the top left quadrant.  For me, the tasks that were urgent and important were usually calling people to ask them if they would be willing to volunteer to serve in our ministry somewhere.  It didn't come natural to me to ask people to give up time in their busy lives to help in some sometimes thankless ministries.  But it is important giving people a ministry in which to serve God.  The more I went through with this exercise, the more I could do it in my head.  I noticed I became less stressed because, before learning this technique, I would get overwhelmed thinking I had so much to do.  When in reality, writing out my tasks allowed me to realize there wasn't as much to do as I was making it out to be.  Plus, I knew the sooner I worked on the important things that were harder for me, the sooner I could get the things done that I enjoyed and came easier to me.

If you find yourself stressed out and anxious right now, I encourage you first of all to pray (Philippians 4:6,7).  Then, try this exercise for a few weeks to see if it helps you to organize what is urgent and important and then do it.  I think you will find that when you write out your tasks they become smaller than your mind made them out to be all along.  I am not saying that you won't be stressed, you very well may just have a way of managing it better.  And you'll learn to do the important things before the time wasters, making you a more effective youth worker.