Your Favorite Activity is a Key to Managing Stress

As I walked out of the office building towards my car, all I could think about was the task that lay ahead of me the following day. Being a product manager and architect for a software company, there were always interesting challenges presented to me. In this case it was finding a solution to a complex issue experienced by a customer which had consumed most of my time all day without a positive result. I was feeling quite tired and drained, and was worried that I would not be able to find a solution to the problem. I was starting to get stressed.

Tonight was kung fu training night, the night I looked forward to every week, but because I was totally preoccupied with the problem I had no desire to go. I felt somewhat lethargic and I just wanted to go straight home and eat dinner. Despite how I felt, I decided to go anyway. I walked into the kung fu academy and got changed into my gear. I then started to warm up before the class doing the regular standard body stretch I always did. As I stretched, all I could think about was work. It was really consuming me.

Being one of the most senior students in the academy that night, my teacher asked me to take the warm up for the class. Directing a class of 20 students was the last thing I wanted to do. I hesitantly started the class with some standard joint rotations, followed by some light stretching, and then finally picked up the pace with a little cardio including various punches and kicks. Within 20 minutes, I had almost forgotten what had happened at work and was feeling quite energetic. I then spent the last 5 minutes of the warm up doing some really cool drills that all the students liked. After a total of 25 minutes, the class including myself was pumped ready to be taught some new techniques by our teacher, and I was feeling great, having no concerns about work what so ever. It was the last thing on my mind.

The rest of the class was awesome. The teacher decided that we were going to have an intense session of kicking the pads followed by light sparring. By the end of the night, I was dripping with sweat. Even though it was a hard workout, I no longer felt lethargic. In fact I felt like I had more energy than when I started.

As I walked out of the Kung Fu academy that night it dawned on me how different my attitude was to the problem that lay ahead, compared to when I first walked in that night one and half hours before. It is amazing what impact, an activity that you love, has on your mind set. I felt like I the problem that had previously consumed me was now no big deal at all.

I ended up enjoying the rest of the night eating a light dinner with my wife and relaxing with her in front of the TV. After a restful sleep, the next morning I woke up with a few potential solutions that had magically manifested over night. Sure enough I had the problem solved within a couple of hours that day.