10 Ways to Un-Vex Your Life in Four Minutes

Four minutes is not much time to do much of anything. However …

But I’m a reality coach. What hinders productivity and increases stress, I think, is failure to clean up loitering vexations – those slight annoyances, anxieties, and distresses that we leave unresolved. Consequently, we suffer more pain avoiding than attending to them.

So, take four minutes to read this list of vexations and then spend four minutes on each one that fits, getting them off your mind and out of your life. You’ll be a happier, healthier, greener person – guaranteed, says pitchman Billy May.

1. Vexation: You’re bothered by knowing who you are but not being able to yank the words out of your soul.
   Un-vex: Your mind has taken charge. Stop intellectualizing and try simplifying. Come up with four words in four minutes that describe who you are and what you do — not boilerplate words, gritty words like “edgy thinker, detail addict.”
2. Vexation: You keep promising yourself to get healthier.
   Un-vex: Eat a banana. During the four minutes it takes to eat the banana, you might realize, what would happen if I stopped dieting and every day – every day! – ate five servings of fruits and vegetables.” C’mon, this is easy.
3. Vexation: You made an off-handed comment to a less-liked colleague this morning and are still feeling somewhat righteous yet regretful that you said it.
   Un-vex: Take two minutes alone in your office to collect your thoughts, 30 seconds to walk down the hall, one minute to surprise and apologize to the colleague you offended, and the remaining 30 seconds walking back to your office feeling relieved, humbled, and committed to getting better at biting your lip rather than people.
4. Vexation: You cared about a former staff member and his future when he worked for you, but you wonder how he is doing six months after you were forced to let him go because of budget cuts.
   Un-vex: Call a staff member who is still friends with her former colleague and get an update. Contacting the individual directly can be sticky for legal, HR, and personal reasons. But going through an intermediary will get you honest information. During the call, don’t justify your decision or otherwise explain yourself; just ask questions.
5. Vexation: You have been so enamored and owned by technology — your laptop, your smartphone, your social networking app, your home theater – that you worry about losing perspective.
   Un-vex: You need to be reminded how amazing creation is. Spend four minutes looking out a window when you hear an airplane coming. Think about the technology that, as one comedian says, lets people sit in a chair in the sky. Then look at a bird and also your reflection in the glass. You get the point.
6. Vexation: You’ve been arguing all day to yourself and others why your position was the right one during yesterday’s troublesome, stalemated meeting – and you know you have been wasting valuable time.
   Un-vex: Read your meeting notes, think again about what you said, but this time more open-mindedly than analytically, and jot down a possible solution that could break the gridlock. Give up the wrong belief that you have to be either right or compromised in exchange for compromising to do what might be right for the organization.
7. Vexation: You’ve been personally offended by people not spending much time on your website, the content of which you wrote.
   Un-vex: The next time you’re stopped at a four-minute traffic light, ask yourself, how can only three colors influence the behavior of so many people when all the information on your website cannot. Then go back to the office, re-edit, reduce, and re-energize the content … and insert images that are worth a thousand words.
8. Vexation: The pile of must-read and want-to read materials on your desk is slowly convincing you that they may become never-read.
   Un-vex: Toss all the materials into the bottom drawer. Then make a note on your calendar for the last day of the month to pull out the drawer, and empty its contents into your waste basket without thinking. There, now you will have to rely on your own wits to be smart.
9. Vexation: You hate meetings because too many participants are consuming too much time on trivia, but you don’t want to say something that would irritate everyone.
   Un-vex: During a meeting, when someone makes a brief but insightful comment, ask her to spend four minutes expanding on the idea. This will serve as an example of the kind of high-quality, potentially high-impact thinking that should dominate every meeting.
10. Vexation: You have been worrying too much about being lame and underappreciated.
    Un-vex: Spend four minutes thinking of some simple accomplishment that recently gave you an ego boost: an amazing golf shot, the loss of four pounds in one week, the unexpected congratulatory note from the CEO you’ve never met. Maybe, just maybe, there is a chance you can lower your handicap, lose another three pounds, and get to finally know the top-gun.

Richard Skaare 06.17.09
Photo credit: phxpma

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