Sans-stress

Posted on May 11, 2008

Stress: difficulty that causes worry or emotional tension; “she endured the stresses and strains of life”; “he presided over the economy during the period of the greatest stress and danger”

Stress is something I used to struggle with.

I’d get wound up about things going on in my life, and take it out on people around me (or myself), I’d drink and smoke too much (attempting to relieve the tension), I’d be short on sleep, eat all the wrong foods, and generally make things worse for myself.

Eventually, I figured out some simple facts about stress - and these helped me let go, and generally live a happier, and comparatively stress free life.

Firstly, there are two sorts things that cause stress. There are things you can do something about, and things that are outside of your control.

Let’s deal with the second sort first, because that’s the easiest by far: If I can’t do anything about it, if it’s outside my control, why should I stress about it? It’d be like stressing about being hit by a meteorite, or about not winning the lottery.

If I can do something about them, then I do it, and the stress goes away. I find that even if I can’t finish whatever it is straight away, even if it’s going to take some time to get dealt with, the very fact that I’m making movements towards solving whatever it is mean the stress recedes to the point of not being a factor in my life.

Do I completely avoid all stress this way? Not at all.

Some stress is useful - perhaps even necessary, but only if you act on it in order to make the stress go way. What I can do, using this method, is minimise the length of time I feel stress, and compartmentalise things a bit better. If there are stressful goings on at work, and I’ve acted on them as much as I can, I can go home at the end of the day with a clear conscience, and not be stressed at home.

Stress builds on itself, it mounds up, and you can build the proverbial mountain of it from a small collection of molehills if you’re not careful.

Learning to live without constant stress has to be one of the best moves I’ve made in my entire life.

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