don’t turn “this stress” into “distress”

By popular demand (that is, one person’s request), today’s topic is “stress”.
Having already had this in the back of my mind for the past week, it’s funny that just today my life should be humored by the mail I received. Today the mailman (or woman, I’m not quite sure) left me two letters (that’s right, not one, but two). One sender I was familiar with, the other I had but a faint guess at who it might be (but knowing it must be something of importance since they required confirmation of delivery). Well, to spare you any more elaboration on the stories: they were both bills. big ones. One completely unexpected, the other somewhat unexpected (“somewhat”, since I didn’t expect this bill to hit until February or March). And to give you and idea why this might be of any significance (or relevance to this blog): I’m completely blank. (yes, I saved and spent every last penny on what’s most important to me, and that’s the opportunity to go spend some time with my wonderful girlfriend). Both of these bills that just paved their way into my life on this dreary late autumn day exceed my current monthly wage. Additionally the sender of the completely unexpected bill been so kind as to offer me six days to hand over the mulah before they take me to court.

So, can you see how this might possibly be a stressor in my life right now? Now I believe I have gained the credibility to write about this topic…

Since this isn’t a paper, but rather a blog post, I’ll try not to elaborate too much, but just give you a little food for thought.

I found this explanation/definition of stress in the internet “Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal body to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined.” (from The Stress Of Life, Hans Selye, as quoted in Wikipedia) The first thing this statement tells us, is that stress is a response. Recently I was listening to Jack Canfield as he was talking about his favorite formula: E + R = O . That is, “Event + Response = Outcome”. This means, the outcome isn’t merely determined by what happens to you, but also (and perhaps largely) by the way you respond to that. Which brings us to the famous quote by the Greek philosopher Epictetus “it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to it that matters.” Many times we can’t control the event – the circumstance, the situation, whatever it is that is happening or has happened to us, but if we don’t like the outcome, we DO have the choice about how we respond to that event. Now if stress is a response, this means that we can choose to either have it or not have it. The event itself (whether it be a task or a situation) is not the stress, our response to this event determines whether or not we experience stress.

Stress relievers: here are a few things that might help you in dealing with stressful situations (or things to do once you feel stressed)
- be thankful: think of all the blessings in your life, begin to write them down, and remind yourself daily
- do sports: a great way to vent some of that crazyness building up inside you
- listen to music: either something uplifting, or something that identifies with your situation (I don’t recommend depressing or hateful music/lyrics)
- eat some chocolate: a little, now don’t overdo it! but a few happy endorphins might just work a miracle
- read Calvin and Hobbes: or any type of humor that can get you at least chuckling, at best rolling on the floor.
- put it in perspective: my mother would always quote my grandmother saying “what’s that compared to eternity?!”. now, since our little brains don’t do well thinking in terms of eternity, we might take up the suggestion of Darren Hardy (Publisher of Success magazine) to ask yourself “In 20 years will this matter” (do you remember what you were stressed about on November 19th, 1988? well, there you go!). Another point he makes in the article is “at least I don’t live in Bosnia” – a thought that came to mind after he’d been stressed about something and then turned on the TV and seen the news. When you realize the problems some people face, you’ll realize how minute some of the things you worry about are. What gets me is thinking back to the time I spent in Thailand: meeting the girls there who’d been at risk of being sold into prostitution by their families, seeing them smiling and enjoying life, praising God, makes me realize that my problems most of the time aren’t even worth mentioning. If they can praise God after all they’ve gone through, who am I to complain?!

Remember:
You choose how you view a situation: you can view it as a challenge, an opportunity to grow – greatness is often birthed in arduous circumstances. If it’s pressure – that’s how diamonds are shaped; If it’s resistance – that’s how muscles are built; if it’s opposition blowing straight in your face – that’s how a sail can chart a new course. You choose.

If you still feel the need to read more about stress or avoiding it, the google search for stress came up with over 160million results, “avoid stress” turned out almost 2 million results, and “prevent stress” came back with over 2.5 million results – so there’s plenty of info (personally I would recommend the article by Darren Hardy mentioned above, and the second one about building resilience to stress).