Wondering Why You Feel Stressed? A Personal Inventory Might Be the Answer
You feel off. You’re stressed. Perhaps you’re not sleeping as well as you would like. Your anxiety levels constantly feel elevated. Other words that you may use to describe your current feelings are overwhelmed, too busy, never have enough time to do personal things, or just plain tired all the time. I know I feel many of those. And who can blame anyone? The last four plus years feel like a blur. It has seemingly been non-stop since the world did stop for COVID. The pace has only quickened and the uncertainties only grown. It just feels hard. Certainly, harder than it should be. Often, we don’t even fully understand why we feel the way we do. That is where taking a personal inventory comes in.
What is a personal inventory? In many ways, it is a self-assessment. However, we tend to connect that to the physical work we are doing or something we need to do for our supervisor in our job. A personal inventory is much more, well, personal. This is looking inward and spending time to understand how you feel. And, yes, that can be scary for many reasons. Perhaps highest on the why list is that we are unpracticed at doing it. Plus, we’re not quite sure what we might discover, and that is a scary thing.
A personal inventory goes well beyond goal evaluation, and can help you see all areas of your life, how they work together, and ultimately find solutions to what impacts you most. I realize that doesn’t make it any less frightening. It may even add to the concerns you have, but I do think it is a beneficial activity.
Life Domains
Life domains are a fancy way of talking about the roles you play in your life and the areas of life that impact you directly. You can read dozens of articles on this and end up with a lengthy list of those areas. In my research, I have found what I believe to be the most common, and are listing those below to help you get started. As you become more familiar and comfortable with the practice of taking a personal inventory, you can certainly add more.
With each area of your life, you’ll want to think about what is important to you, how they connect, and what influences there are on each. Again, this list is not all-inclusive, and you may find others you want to add.
Work/Career — your vocation. What you do to earn a living. And if your current situation is outside the workforce, do you have future aspirations and what does that look? If you are a stay-at-home parent or caregiver, that is definitely something you can include here. That is very hard work and is a season of your life that you need to explore. Your individual situation will guide you to how you want to approach this life area.
Family — those closest to you. We all have multiple levels of family, so determine how you wish to define this. I have heard people break this down into roles they play in life as well. Mother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, friend, partner, etc. Make this your own and define family the way you see it. This exercise in itself might lead to many important discoveries about how you see yourself and how your life intersects with others.
Physical Health — how you feel physically. You could think of this a ‘body’ versus ‘mind’, see below. When you look in the mirror, how do you see yourself and the physical image you see staring back? Scan your body, what are the physical sensations you feel? It can be tough to acknowledge the aches and pains that may not have been there in previous years.
Mental Health — how you feel emotionally. This can be one of the most difficult ones to describe and complete. We don’t always have the right words to describe more than just feeling stressed or anxious. That’s OK. Start there and as you explore it further you may be able to capture the thoughts in different ways.
Finances — your monetary situation. Finances can be one of the most stressful parts of anyone’s lives. This is an important one to understand your connections to money, how it makes you feel and the stressors that come from it.
Hobbies and Fun — what you do for yourself to enjoy your time. This is not just about listing what you do for hobbies, but how participating in those makes you feel. Why do you do them? That may be a great place to start thinking about they make you feel.
Relationships — connections outside of family. For some people, you may connect this to family. For others, your friendships, and connections beyond family may be important to separate. You may look at this as friends, co-workers, peers, or the roles you play both inside and outside your work. Define this in a way that works for you.
Spirituality — connections to yourself and your place in the universe. There isn’t a good way to describe this that will fit for everyone. Regardless of your religious beliefs, we all still occupy space within the greater universe we live in. For some, this will tie neatly to your participation in your religious community. For others, this may be exploring how we fit into the bigger, universal picture of life itself.
Many of these can span multiple parts of your life. Further, some of these can be broken into even smaller categories that you would like to explore deeper. Hobbies and fun can be two very separate things. If you are heavily involved in your community, you may want to break that out separately, versus thinking of that as a relationship area. The real point is, use life domains, areas, or roles the way that makes the most sense to you. The critical part is capturing within those how you feel, what you want to do, and the impact they have on yourself as a whole. Also, I want to mention that you can eliminate one or any of them as well. You may not need some of these, or you may be comfortable combining them together. Family and relationships can easily be combined if that works best for you.
Similar to what I would recommend about completing a self-assessment and goal reviews, to complete your personal inventory find a quiet space and dedicate plenty of time to this. Grab a notebook, tablet, or computer, whichever you feel best about capturing notes in, and just start writing what comes to your mind for each of the life domains I have listed above. No rules, no filters, just capturing what comes to mind. This can be a great place to use dictation, so you can just speak your thoughts as they come.
Taking a personal inventory is a valuable exercise at any point, but as we begin May, Mental Health Awareness Month, it seems like a perfect time to dedicate time to our own well-being. Understanding where you are, how you feel, and what external (and internal) forces may be causing stress, anxiety, or other distractions is the best starting point for identifying resolutions. In the next several articles we will explore the importance of mental health in any leader, but especially in our retail industry which is often overlooks the mental impact of working in fast-paced complex environment. Having your personal inventory completed will assist in this journey and the approaches that any of us could take to ensure we are practicing self-care, and able to provide insights and support for others around us.
What are the possible benefits you’d like to see from taking your personal inventory?
Join other retail leaders in continuing their development journey with Effective Retail Leader.com. SUBSCRIBE today to receive leadership tips directly to your inbox and monthly newsletters that provide many tools to help further develop your leadership skills. JOIN NOW!