Reducing Stress the 80/20 Way!

In business, for example, 80% of your sales success will come from 20% of your customers and 80% of your customer service problems will come from 20% of your customers. Any business program will strongly suggest that you heavily nurture the top 20% of customers because they are worth 80% of your sales, but you must also ensure the bottom 20% of customers are well-managed because they spend the least amount of money but they will also drain 80% of your resources.

The video below gives a short overview of the history of the 80 20 Rule or Pareto Principle.

To review this concept from a wellness perspective consider that 80% of your health and wellness problems will come from 20% of your stress and lifestyle choices or 80% of your health and wellness success will come from 20% of your wellness efforts.

If you think about the 80/20 Rule in terms of something obvious like smoking, you’ll agree that 80% of your health challenges can be caused by something, seemingly small, like smoking.

But, what about stress? Can 80% of your stress and resulting health challenges be caused by just a couple of problem areas in your life? If you consider the domino effect, it certainly could be true. A seemingly small trigger can launch a series of problems, one leading to the other in each getting bigger in turn. Perhaps reducing stress or even eliminating stress altogether begins with simply identifying the small problem areas that got the whole thing started.

Consider the prescription drug fallacy. People take prescription drugs to deal with medical problems. The drug solves the first problem (in many cases, this is something relatively small), but taking these drugs may cause another problem, so the person takes another drug to address the side effects of the first drug and so on down the domino line it goes.

At no time, though, has the person engaged in any problem solving exercise or tried out a problem solving process to ensure the drugs were even needed in the first place.

A very common version of the situation is the use of drugs to manage diseases like depression or ADD/ADHD. Both of these illnesses are well known to originate in lifestyle choices, particularly diet, and each is easily solved by making simple lifestyle changes, but taking drugs seems to be easier, so we do it. In fact, reducing stress has been proven to have a big impact on solving problems with most, if not all, types of diseases and disorders.

Severe depression can easily steal 80% of our quality of life and oftentimes the root issue that caused the problem is quite easily solved and is probably very small. Maybe it is a lost dream that has snowballed into a feeling of total failure. Going back to beginning in revisiting the dream may solve the whole wellness challenge but we don’t do it. We feel powerless and so we turn to drugs.

Reducing stress and solving the wellness challenge is a combat sport, in many ways, and you have to want wellness "in your gut. You have to stop compromising.

Another disease heavily impacted by diet and lifestyle choices and environment is asthma. Take my own story, for example, I am an asthmatic and once diagnosed with this disease, I was told that I would have to use puffers, particularly steroid puffers, for the rest of my life, but even with the puffers, I was very sick a lot of the time. I had very poor quality of life. No medical professional that I dealt with ever suggested that reducing stress may help.

About two years ago, I got tired of being sick all the time and I chose to explore the causes of asthma and I learned that stress was the biggest factor aggravating my asthma. My stress level, along with my food choices, my weak immune system, and my lack of exercise ensured that I would be very sick for the rest of my life.

Changing my food choices was the first step and that helped a lot. Next, I looked at what were the causes of stress in my life. I changed some things, I eliminated some things, and I pursued some things that I had wanted to pursue for a long time. Next, I worked on my immune system and now I have begun to exercise.

What a difference! I have lost weight, I have not had an asthma attack in over 18 months and I do not use puffers at all anymore. There is no question that reducing stress and solving my wellness challenge took much effort, it continues to require diligence on my part and I have a long way to go, but the quality of life I experience now, without pain and without illness, is worth its weight in gold. Reducing stress was a key factor in my being able to get my asthma under control.

The things I needed to change were not large either. 80% of my medical nightmare was easily being caused by 20% of my behavior. Now I’m happier, healthier, I have more energy and I even look better.

Now let’s look at family conflict. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of family conflict will be caused by 20% of the problems in the family. Basically, this means that some really small problem got the ball rolling and now it has exploded into a huge family conflict that drags on and on. Going back to the beginning to explore and solve the wellness challenge that started the whole thing could get rid of a huge amount of stress in the lives of everyone concerned in that family.

You, too, can use the 80/20 rule to your advantage. Consider the things in your life that stress you out and try to explore which ones cause you the most stress. You will most likely find that only two or three categories cause the most stress in your life. Reducing stress in a few key areas will probably have a very large impact on the whole group of other problems that are interfering with your quality of life. Use the 80/20 Rule, a well-known business tool, to take back control of your health and your life.





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