I don’t know if you are willing to subject yourself to emotional therapy; according to the previous post, that might be the best way to eliminate negative stress completely. If not, there are other actions you can take to relieve the stress problem. Let’s talk about a few of them.
1. REVIEW YOUR LIFESTYLE
How do you spend your time? Are you paying more attention to some things and neglecting others? How is your diet, your sleep, physical exercise, leisure time, etc? Are you a workaholic? If so, you won´t have the time to satisfy your spiritual and emotional needs. The keyword for a life with positive stress is BALANCE. For most people, a more balanced life will mean more time spent with friends and family and on activites related to spirituality. With a balanced life you are healthier and have more energy to handle multiple pressures.
2. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR STRESS
Stress isn’t a virus that invades you from the outside, but a discomfort created by your own (often unconscious) reaction to other people and circumstances. Start by refusing to say that this person or that situation stresses me, because with this statement you are placing yourself in the role of the VICTIM. As a victim you place the responsibility for the stress you are experiencing outside yourself. If the outer circumstances ore other people are responsible for your stress, then in order for you to feel less stressed, you will have to wait for the outer situation to disappear or change by itself, or for someone else to do it for you. That means you have no power to manage the situation, because as a victim you have paralyzed yourself and become helpless. You have given away the freedom and power to do manage your stress. The power now belongs to something or somebody else. From there it is easy to fall into a depressive (and unbearable) “poor me” attitude with a constant complaining about everything.
MY “ZONE OF INFLUENCE”
Try to substitute the phrase “this person or that situation stresses me” with “I let myself become stressed by this person or that situation”. This way you´ll get a new perspective on what it means to take responsibility and it will help you stop complaining, because you will discover options on how to manage your stress. To define what options you have in a given situation, I recommend a mental exercise called “My Zone of Influence”. It is a simple, but very effective method to help you liberate yourself from the role of the victim and manage any source of pressure, change, irritation, stress or discomfort without having to complain.
Step 1:
Ask yourself the following question, “Is the source of pressure (the person or circumstance that bothers you) outside of or within my zone of influence?” The ‘zone of influence’ is defined subjectively by you as the area within which you have the power and freedom of action, where if using your resources, knowledge, experience and skills you can act upon and modify the external source of discomfort. This area can sometimes be enlarged if your resources, knowledge, skills, and/or self- confidence increases.
Step 2:
If you decide that the source is within your zone of influence, you are free to act. You become proactive and take actions to try to modify the source in your favor. If the result of your effort is positive, it means you were able to change the circumstances and resolve the problem. But if the situation remains the same despite having exhausted all your resources, it would seem that what you thought was, or should have been, within your zone of influence, is in fact outside of it. In this case you have to continue to Step 3, if not, it is likely that you will resign and again fall into the role of the victim, saying, “Now, I’ve done everything that I can possibly do, and nothing has changed. Poor me, it looks like I’ve got to put up with it.”
Step 3:
In the case that the source of pressure is outside your zone of influence, either because it is evidently so, or because you have passed through Step 2 unsuccessfully, ask yourself the following question, “Am I willing to accept the situation/reality, and learn to live with it, or not?”
Step 3a:
In the case that the answer is affirmative, your acceptance (if it is real) will resolve the situation, not because it has changed but because your attitude has changed. You put on what we call the “penguin suit” which means consciously “ignoring” the situation. Now you are taking the situation more calmly and are not as involved as before and therefore you don´t let yourself become stressed. Remember that acceptance doesn’t mean giving up. Resignation is a victim attitude that does not take away the discomfort.
Step 3b:
If your answer is ‘no’, your only option is to responsibly study the pros and cons of your actual situation, and in the case that the cons outweigh the pros you must face the difficult decision of distancing yourself from the source of stress, by for example moving, or getting divorced or changing your career or job in the search for something better. That, of course, is unless you think that your mission in life is to suffer.
To summarize the options you always have managing any situation in your life:
• PROACTIVITY
I do everything I can to change the sources of discomfort that I believe I can change.
• RESPONSIBLE INDIFFERENCE
I accept the sources of discomfort that I cannot change.
• RESPONSIBLE FLIGHT
I distance myself from the sources of discomfort that I cannot change nor accept.
As a victim you take no action to improve what is within your zone of influence and neither do you move away when you are unable to accept what is outside of it. You end up putting up with an increasingly unbearable life, poisoning your existence and that of those around you with your continuous complaining.
Now, if you get up in the morning knowing that you, and nobody else, have chosen the life you are leading, that there are always options, and that new decisions can always be made, you are free. As a free person you adopt the updated version of the ´Prayer of Serenity`:
“Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the strength to change the ones I can,
the courage to distance myself from the ones I cannot change nor accept,
and the wisdom to recognize the difference”.
3. WHAT IS THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN?
When you realize that you are letting yourself become stressed, ask yourself the following question: what is the worst thing that can happen? Your answer will depend a lot on your level of self-confidence. With little self-confidence, your insecurity would rapidly produce a catastrophic fantasy like: “To be fired from my job, and be without income to pay my expenses and finish up living under a bridge”, or something similar. With a higher degree of self-esteem, you would have a more positive vision of the future and would answer: “Maybe they’ll fire me and I will have to go through a difficult time, but with my creativity and intelligence I know I’ll come up with something to steer me in the right direction”. This means that the higher your self-confidence, the lesser the perception of danger, and the lesser the frecuency with which your stress reaction will activate. Another question you can ask is, “Is this a life threatening situation?” If the answer is “no”, you can allow yourself to relax.
4. THE TWO BASIC RULES OF LIFE:
1. Don’t worry about small things.
2. Most things are small.
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