We all experience stress. The world and our cultures produce stressors at a rate where our only hope is to learn how to cope. Unfortunately, the majority of us have no clue how to do so. We will enter a stressful situation and then stay stressed. This scenario will occur regardless of the way the experience ends. How can we ever win with that approach? We can’t. Most of us understand we cannot avoid stress, but we don’t think of controlling what we can. What we can control is how we handle stress once we have it. How do we make sure we don’t carry it too long? What is an employable method to assure our future stressful encounters are manageable?
Have you ever experienced a stressful situation where you were overwhelmed? Being overwhelmed can cause anxiety and panic attacks. Attempting to prevent getting to this point, we may make bad decisions to escape the situation. A bad decision can be rushing a decision. An example would be buying a house or car. Being able to relax within a stressful situation is vital. It may sound impossible, but it is not. It is a skill that grows over time. The ability to think and process information in an uncomfortable position will allow us to control the stress.
Going back to the house or car scenario, we’ll have what we want in mind. We begin to look and may realize what we want is not available. Our reaction to this situation is what we need to change. Usually, we go right into the stress and overwhelmed state. We are not thinking correctly. The goal is to find something as close to exactly what we want. We should tell ourselves it will be a long process. This thought process prepares us for setbacks and gives us a built-in boost if it is a quick process. This strategy is a great start in managing tasks that will have stressful instances.
In the journey of getting to being able to control our stress levels, how can we manage the length of carrying the stress? What methods can we use to manage stress? One way of managing the length of the stress is explaining to yourself why you are stressed. Introducing logic into a situation can help with avoiding holding on to stress. A great example is a situation that was stressful but turned out in our favor. Logic would say it all worked out, and the stress can cease. The majority of us don’t employ this logic. We are upset the experience was not what we thought it would be and let anger or disappointment convince us to stay stressed. We cannot allow that anymore. We are hurting ourselves and holding on to stress that isn’t logically ours.
In closing, controlling stress is a skill we cannot afford to postpone anymore. Stress will never stop, but our skills in dealing with it can improve to levels we couldn’t imagine. This skill will add years to your life and the life of those in your circle upon us sharing methods to build the skill. Injecting logic into situations is just one method. Simply living will expose more opportunities to build skills and find other methods that work for you. As you learn more, remember to pay it forward. You may not have thought to talk yourself out of stress using logic. A person that crosses your path may not think of utilizing the method you find. Pass on the information. We are all in this together.
Food for thought. You do the dishes!
