BMI (Body Mass Index) is a well known mechanism used by medical specialists to glean a general indication of a patient’s physical fitness and health.
But there is (perhaps very surprisingly) not a widely recognised or advertised stress based equivalent.
This may be because stress and anxiety come in many different shapes and forms, so are difficult to calculate in the same way as, say, weight and height.
How stressed we feel overall at a particular time is a culmination of individual stress factors and triggers throughout the period leading up to it.
But it’s not as simple as just ‘adding up’ those constituent stresses to reach a calculation of the whole, because they do not manifest themselves as statistics.
For this reason, we find it useful to have our own ‘SMI™’ (Stress Management Index™) that we keep an ongoing check on.
Please note that SMI™ is not at this point a widely recognised medical term!
Our SMI™ is merely a self guide as how generally stressed we ‘feel’ at a particular point in time.
This, we find, is just more helpful and accurate than the many self stress ‘tests’ available online that aim to ‘score’ stress levels by way of completion of a formal questionnaire.
So, for us, an SMI™ of 1/10 on a Friday means we are overall feeling about as relaxed as we could be, whereas an SMI™ of 10/10 on a Wednesday (reported by leading research to be the most stressful day of the week, incidentally, contrary to the commonly held mistaken belief that the most stressful day is a Monday!) means we are overall feeling about as stressed out as we could conceivably be.
The SMI™ stress banding in between (marks 2-8) represent increased levels of stress being felt up to the maximum of 10.
Our scoring at any particular time, in its turn informs us as to whether, e.g., we are up to a particular course of action such as taking on more work, or whether we maybe need some exercise or down time, or perhaps we if need to " 'Get Away from it All' to Stressbust™ For a Bit" (see our earlier post so entitled).
Generally speaking, we expect to have an SMI™ of 3 to 5.
This acknowledges that there is always something in life to be thinking about but it’s not monopolising us, so we let it ride.
Anything between 5-7 and its something to keep a close eye on to make sure it drops back down again, as triggers for us can often cause a natural peak at this level for a short period.
If we are in the 8-10 range, however, this merits a 2 heads rather than 1 immediate sit down discussion along the lines of that described in our previous post entitled "5 Key Steps to Stressbusting™ Decision Making".
The idea of using these kinds of ranges is not new.
Hospices for example regularly ask patients themselves how their pain is between 1 and 10 to get an overall sense of the patient’s physical state before commencing specific examinations.
In reality, we have never (as yet) scored an SMI™ of either 1 or 10, but it’s comforting to know those scores are there if needed.
There is no magic in this exercise. It just enables us to personally monitor how stressed we feel.
The point is such useful exercises are rarely deployed in the stressbusting™ arena.......until now, that is! 🙂
Lots of love, LouLoU&MikeyM™🙂💛💚💙💢 xxxxx