My Philosophy on STRESS
It rained in Los Angeles yesterday. The Pineapple Express was dumping torrents of water across the city flooding streets and jamming traffic.
I had an 11:00am flight out of LAX. My normal 40-minute Uber to the airport was 1 hour and 40 minutes. I had a video conference call I did on my phone on the way to LAX. Every time someone called me, my phone dropped the conference call. I got soaked in the short run from the Uber to the terminal. Then TSA pull me out of Pre-Check for a search because the protein powder in my bag looked suspicious.
I shared my adventure with a fellow passenger while waiting at the gate. To my surprise they responded with, “Oh! How stressful!” Funny, I didn’t think of it as stressful. I just thought of it as life.
There was a point, back in my youth and inexperience, that I tried to avoid stressful situations and live a “stress-free” life. But stress always seemed to find me. I even had the stress of trying to determine if a situation was going to be stressful so I could avoid it!
Based on that short youthful experiment, I developed my Philosophy of Stress. It is simply this – Stress tells us what is important.
For example – when talking, we stress certain words in a sentence to give them greater importance than the other words. In the sentence, “Do it NOW!!” “Now“ is stressed as the most important word in the sentence, calling for immediate action.
Stress is life’s way of showing us what is important, what needs attention, what we need to handle.
- If we find ourselves under financial stress, we need to handle something with our finances.
- If our parents or children cause us stress, we need to focus our attention and resolve some issue with our family.
- If we have physical stress, we need to address health issues, lose weight, exercise more, etc.
When the issue is resolved, stress no longer taps us on the shoulder reminding us pay attention.
There was also a Part II to my Philosophy of Stress.
There are two types stress.
The stress caused by life pushing “in” on me. In my example of trying to avoid stress, I just retreated to a smaller sphere of influence and became less involved with the interactions of life. Fortunately, for me, I was quick to realize that retreating from life was a problem and not a solution.
Some 20 years ago, my mother-in-law came to live with my wife and me. Over the years she had attempted to avoid stress. She had retreated to the space of her bedroom where she viewed life on a 19″ colored TV. Trips to the supermarket, fueling the car or even an expected knock on the door were extremely stressful to her.
Then stress is caused when I push “out” on life. The stress of learning something new, meeting new people, accepting a promotion I am not sure I can handle or standing on stage speaking to an audience of strangers. In this case, stress tells me where I need to improve, where I need to gain competence.
In my early days of flying, I was stressed with every new flight and every new airport I landed at. But as my abilities and confidence grew, stress retreated. Who knows, if it had not been for that stress pointing out the importances of each flight, I may not be here today…
When I realized that I am going to have stress, one way or the other, I decided to try to pick my own battles and create my own stress. I found it a lot less stressful in the long run that way!