I’ve traditionally been an expert at creating my own stress.
Simply said, self-created stress is making things worse than they
have to be. Blowing things out of proportion, jumping
to conclusions, imagining worse case scenarios, overanalyzing, and
wasting energy on things that are counterproductive are just a few
examples of self-created stress. I’m not saying that there aren’t
big things and real problems in life to stress over. Coping with a
tragedy, suffering a loss, having a sick family member or experiencing a
financial crisis are all things that rightfully deserve our concern. But
do you ever notice that with the major events, or the life altering
experiences, we show amazing courage and grace? We ask for help and
reach out to our support systems, and most of the time we get that
support and we persevere. But what makes our day-to-day lives less
fulfilling than they can be, and eats away at us and the quality of
our lives is making big things out of things that really are small
and creating stress out of ordinary life events. If you could
just eliminate this self-created stress, wouldn’t that increase
the quality of your life tremendously?
Where
does it originate?
I often ask my audiences if they believe
stress is mental or physical. It’s an interesting question. If said I was up
all night with worry and concern, would that be mental or physical? Certainly,
it would be both, but the key is that it’s always mental before it’s
physical. It starts in the mind,
and ends with the physical effects on our bodies, such as insomnia, high blood
pressure, ulcers, and headaches, to name a few.
If we want to reduce our self-created
stress, we need to focus our efforts on our minds and thoughts. We are used to
thinking of stress as originating from outside of us, from external sources. In
reality, it’s not the events or stimuli in life that cause us stress it’s
our response to those stimuli and how we internalize them.
As William James, who is considered by many
to be the father of modern psychology, said: “Thinking is the grand originator
of our experience.”
What this means is that you can’t feel
anything unless you think it first. If you were in an acting workshop and you
were asked to get an angry look on your face, you’d first have to think about
something that makes you feel angry. Even if you’re in grieving over a major
loss, you’ll notice that the times when you feel sad are the times when
you’re thinking about your loss. There is a medically proven mind body spirit connection, and every thought that we have has a physical
reaction in our body.
Imagine that feeling responds to thought at the speed of light. The moment the
thought “I’m unattractive” passes across the screen of your mind you
instantly feel depressed. So, if you want to change how you feel, you must change what your thinking about and focusing on.
About the Author
Kevin
Stacey helps companies and professionals achieve maximum productivity
and effectiveness through stress management and time management
training. He is available to speak on these topics.
For more information visit http://www.TrainRightInc.com
or call 1-800-603-7168.
