Small Changes That Can Make a Big Difference to Your North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Journey
In a recent blog post, we discussed how many beneficiaries (or would-be beneficiaries) on North Carolina workers’ compensation struggle with setbacks in multiple arenas, including medical, financial, emotional, logistical, and social.
To manage these setbacks, you might find it helpful to adopt proven strategies and tactics to keep yourself better organized, more in control of your life, more relaxed, and more resilient.
This blog post cannot cover every positive behavior or beneficial scheduling strategy. However, it hopefully can encourage you to take the process of self improvement more seriously. Here are a few small but effective “good habits” to inculcate to relieve the stress of your North Carolina workers’ compensation journey.
• Get into the habit of keeping your e-mail inbox “at zero” – try out productivity guru David Allen’s GTD system for controlling e-mail (see link at the bottom of the page).
• Spend more time and energy thinking through your problems instead of acting impulsively to solve them. Do the mental work of clarifying an ideal outcome, assessing your “on the ground reality,” and brainstorming ideas to move from your present reality to your idealized future in an effective, sure-fire, cheap, and easy way. In other words, seek to break out of the habit of “acting before thinking.”
• Seek help and outside input. It’s often very difficult for victims of workplace injuries or accidents to ask for help, because victims already feel like their pride and autonomy have been compromised. Consciously break through that barrier and get help from friends, colleagues, family members, and outside resources, like a competent North Carolina workers’ compensation law firm.
• Test “catastrophic thinking.” When we get hurt or injured – when our welfare, health, social status, etc., are threatened by events or by other people – we have a tendency to imagine worst-case, catastrophic outcomes. This is a normal, human thinking, and it’s not necessarily deleterious. In fact, it can be helpful to be vigilant, depending on the situation. However, we always want to test the reality of our thoughts – especially thoughts that agitate us, keep us from sleeping, or scare us into spending hours on the Internet searching for a description and diagnosis of our symptoms.
• Thinking realistically is different from being a pollyanna. You don’t want to ignore dangerous symptoms, be they indicators of medical, financial, or psychological problems. On the other hand, we also want to detach our emotions and fears from our thoughts and seek to see them with a clear, objective lens.
• How do you cultivate this kind of clear-headed thinking? Some experts recommend engaging in daily meditative practice, such as mindful mediation, concentrated prayer, or some other exercise that enhances focus and helps you avoid getting sucked up into catastrophic thinking.
More Web Resources:
The Perils of Catastrophic Thinking
