As a well-respected trainer who instructs people in ways to achieve higher consciousness and personal growth, I thought it would be helpful to give my readers an opportunity to take a short theory test.
All you need to do is read the short scenario below and then choose the best way of managing it, all the while maintaining patience, focus and balance. Then check the key below to find your score.
Ready?
Situation:
It's a Sunday morning after a very intense week and you have been looking forward to relaxing with the weekend paper with a steaming mug of coffee, soothed by gentle music playing quietly in the background. In actual fact, your child is tearing deafeningly through the house with a playmate, leaving a swathe of destruction in their wake.
Circle the correct management option:
1. Ask for help.
2. Find your "Yes".
3. Connect with nature.
4. Meditate.
5. Spank the child.
6. Consult a self-help manual.
Scoring:
1. This is a good option, if there is someone available to ask. It is highly likely your helpmate has already locked herself in the bathroom or has left the premises altogether leaving a note promising to return for your child's graduation. You're probably on your own. 1 point.
2. This is also a good choice, except if the children mistake your chanting as an agreement to their request to have a fourth ice cream cone (which you didn't hear because you were chanting "Yes"). 1 point
3 Getting some fresh air and enjoying the beauty of the natural world beyond your door is a sure-fire cure for stress. Unless, of course, the children have tried to be helpful and have pulled out all of the flowers in the garden ("We weeded for you!") and made a mudslide of the backyard ("We watered the lawn!"). Then there are those pint-sized footprints that are now decorating the entire house… 1 point
4. Meditation would be ideal to calm your nerves and block out the din. However, the logistics of finding a quiet place in which to center yourself are immense in this situation (your helpmate is already occupying the only room with a lock in the house). Also, an adult sitting on the floor with eyes closed is incredibly inviting to little people who want to know if you're asleep (by prying open your eyelids and saying, "Are you asleep?") 1 point
5. This may be an appealing option at this point. However, you are dangerously outnumbered and the squeals of play are recognizably different from the howls of punishment. You would feel terrible afterward and may have to entertain a visitor from Child and Family Services. And you will not have solved the noise problem. 0 points
6. This is by far your best option. It will list the first four measures, all of which we have determined are ill-suited to your Sunday stress problem. However, if after consulting the book, you simply tear out all of the pages and toss them around the room, you will definitely feel your stress dissipate. 5 points.
