I apologize for not writing the past couple of weeks. It has been an incredibly stressful time for me lately. I have a new work schedule, and my life feels like it’s in chaos right now. However, I’m not going to run from it. While I may not say everything on this blog, I do want to be as transparent as I think is appropriate.

You may have heard the phrase “Put it on the back burner.” I took that idea and ran with it. The result is something I think is really neat and that I want to discuss today. I also love to cook, so this analogy made a lot of sense to me pretty easily.

Among other things, I see my brain as a stove. Each separate issue has its own container to fit on my stove. All of these issue are stress points for me. The way I see it, there are three main types of issues on the stove:

• Rice- If you have ever cooked rice on the stove top or in a rice cooker, then you know that the best thing that you can do for rice is leave it alone. You don’t stir rice. You bring it to a boil, drop down the heat, cover it, and let it cook out/absorb the water on its own.
• Water- There’s the phrase “A watched pot never boils.” If you have ever boiled water, you know that it can take a while to boil. Before the water boils, there’s not really anything to do. You can leave it alone, and it will continue to do what it’s going to do. It doesn’t need help. However, once it does start to boil, you better have an action plan in place. Otherwise, it will get everywhere and cause a huge mess and disaster.
• Milk- Cooking milk on the stove requires constant attention. You have to be stirring it or you risk it scalding. You cannot leave milk alone to just do its own thing. You have to be with it and monitoring it constantly.

Now you might be wondering how different types of cooking translates to issues in real life. Let me change some of it and give examples to help you understand.

• Rice- In terms of my analogy, these are issues that will work out on their own. For example, I had a few mosquito bites recently. I have a tendency to pick at scabs and itch bug bites uncontrollably.  I have many scars on my body from this, and I want to do better. The best cure for those bites was to put anti-itch cream on them, and let them heal on their own. It still took a place on my stove, but it wasn’t something I could do a lot to fix. I just let it be until the mosquito bites healed.
• Water- These are things for me that will be a problem eventually, so it is something I need to figure out. But I mainly just need to be ready for it. An example of this that I can easily think of is creating my lesson plans at work for my job. I need to know what I am teaching and doing, but it will take a bit before it becomes a pressing issue.
• Milk- These are the things you need to focus on first and in the here and now. Milk for me is my day-to-day teaching. I have to spend most of my time with what I am doing for that day. Everything else will come later.

Now that you know the different types, I want to give you an example for what I did to help myself. When I’m stressed, my brain just sends out a generic panic signal, kind of like a fire alarm. My brain just sounds off and I have to find the fire. So I sat down with myself and wrote down every single thing that was bothering me. Every piece of stress I could find in my brain, no matter how small, made it onto the list.  It felt nice to put down every pot onto my stove.

From there, I made a second list of action plans I could accomplish. Some of my stress points were rice where I could let them be. Others were water. Very few were actually milk. Once I could recognize what each stress point actually was, then I could figure out how to solve them. It doesn’t mean that each issue magically is solved. All of these issues are still there. But the fire alarm gets turned off, and the pots are ready for the next step.

I still have a long way to go. I still have a lot of stress on my back. But this exercise has been nice for at least catching my breath. It helps me formulate an action plan of where I could be going. I hope it maybe helps you too.