Conventional SWOT analysis is used to look at your
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in a situation. Stress
SWOT Analysis will show you where you need to improve your stress
management skills.
How SWOT Works
Carrying out the Stress
SWOT Analysis ensures that you recognize all the personal strengths,
skills, resources, and social networks that can help you to manage
stress. You may find that you have strengths and skills that you are not
aware of. This analysis will highlight them. By looking at your
weaknesses, you identify areas you need to change in your life,
including any new skills that you need to acquire. Listing opportunities
enables you see how you can take advantage of your strengths to help
you manage the stress in your life, and emphasizes the rewards of good
stress management. By looking at the factors that are threats, you can
recognize the negative consequences of managing stress poorly, and this
should be a potent source of motivation.
Seek Support
Many people become
stressed because they fail to recognize the resources at their disposal
and the support network on which they can draw to help them to cope
with stressful situations. It is important to recognize that very few
people can do everything without help. Knowing how to recognize those
situations where you should draw on the help available to you is an
important part of stress management.
Carry Out Your Stress SWOT Analysis
With your stress diary at hand, run through the
following procedure to identify your strengths and weaknesses, your
opportunities and threats, and establish how you can harness this
knowledge to manage stress in your life.
1 Write down your personal strengths:
Things you are good at and for which people respect you.
People who are able to help you.
The resources you can draw on.
Times when you managed stress well, and the practical skills you used to do this.
2 Listing your personal weaknesses
and the limitations of your position will help you to identify possible
areas of change in your life and spot where you need to develop new
skills. Write down:
Areas where you are aware that you are not strong, or things that people fairly criticize you for.
Any lack of resources that has an impact on your situation.
Problems with your job, your relationships, your living or working environment.
Times when you did not handle stress well, and why you think this was the case.
3 Think about the opportunities that are available to you:
Work your way through your strengths, and ask yourself how you can draw on these strengths to help you to manage stress.
Work through your weaknesses. Identify opportunities for positive change and the development of new skills.
Consider the practical opportunities that would be open to you if
you were to take advantage of these opportunities to improve your stress
management.
4 When considering your threats,
think about the consequences of leaving your weaknesses uncovered, and
about the damage to your relationships, career, and happiness that would
result. Use this consideration of the downside as a spur to ensure that
you take stress management seriously in the future!
