What is stress?
The technical definition of stress is very complex and often up for debate, but most of us understand what stress feels like. Stress is often seen as a reaction that can be associated with the “lack of fit between the environment and the person” (Mulhall, 1996, p. 459). Maybe going to a certain event makes you nervous because of how people may judge you, or making a specific decision that you are unsure of causes you distress.
The symptoms of stress often include an increased heart rate, nausea, and restlessness. Everyone's reaction to stress might be slightly different and sometimes we don’t slow down enough to acknowledge that we are experiencing stress. Feeling stressed has largely been accepted as just a part of life, which is possibly why reducing stress isn’t often discussed. In the same breath that we express that stress is a normal part of our lives we state that stress is bad for our health.
There are definitely people who deal with stress better than others. What many of these individuals seem to have in common is that they aren’t concerned with failure, this is often due to their belief in a higher power or belief in themselves. Another common characteristic is setting firm and specific boundaries in their life, such as how many hours they will work in a week and how people can treat them. Lastly, understanding who they are and what makes them happy.
Many religions bestow the belief that you aren't’ 100% in control of your life. You will often hear phrases such as: you wouldn’t be put in a situation that you can’t handle, or your life is just how it was meant to be. People who truly believe this don’t fear failure or judgment as much as others because they truly believe that everything happens for a reason and that their happiness is not associated with their ability to not fail. If they do fail then it was merely meant to be and someday it will all make sense. Then you have the individuals who consider themselves a higher power, but often express the same beliefs as traditional religious individuals. They don’t fear failure since it was meant to be or maybe just someone else's fault; they tend to be very good at justifying why they failed which allows them to never feel like “they” actually failed. Either way we can gain two important lessons from these people: having the mindset that you are never 100% in control of your life and new opportunities will always present themselves. This should lighten the weight that you put on your shoulders everyday.
Now let's get on to boundaries and how we often discover that less stressed individuals tend to have firm and specific boundaries. Have you ever met someone who says “oh I never work on Sunday, that’s my recharge day”,“I always go to bed by 10 during the week”, “I broke up with my ex because they didn’t cook”, “I’m not friends with that person anymore because they lied to me”. Oftentimes the sign that they are telling you something associated with one of their boundaries is that to the average person it seems strange, “how can you never work on Sundays you're a Lawyer”, “how do you always go to bed by 10 during the week you have 5 kids”, “how could you break up with someone you like just because they don’t cook”, “how could you not be friends with someone for lying when we all lie sometimes don’t we”. We often try to justify other individual’s shortcomings or we tell ourselves that we are just being too dramatic and it’s not a big deal. For some reason modern society has praised those who are easy going, and being easy going makes it impossible to set boundaries. An important takeaway from the boundary setters is that we should all have firm boundaries and never feel bad about enforcing them, would you rather be considered by others as being easy going or be happy.
Lastly, people who are less stressed seem to have a better understanding of who they are and what makes them happy. We all know that person who goes to the gym 6 days a week and their answer for why is simply “it makes me happy”. Or the person who turns down an amazing job opportunity and their reason for why is “it required me to work in a big city and I don’t like big cities”. Understanding who you are means you have a very clear understanding of what you like, what you don’t like, and what your values are. For instance you might like living in a smaller city, you don’t like drama, and one of your values is honesty. It might seem daunting to make a clear list of these things but it’s imperative.
So how do you take what we have learned about stress and reduce the stress in your life. A great way to help you understand that you aren’t 100% in control of your life and that new opportunities will present themselves is to make yourself be more open minded. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our day to day life that we forget how big the world is and how many opportunities there are out there. We also forget how quickly life can change; by taking action or sometimes things just happen to people. Traveling to places or with people who are completely different than you is a great way to open your mind, if you can afford traveling try it and make yourself be 100% focused on learning during the trip by taking notes and asking questions “be the annoying why person”. Volunteering is also a great way to open your mind without having to spend a lot of money. Focus on volunteering for Organizations that expose you to people's lives who are completely different than yours or that you feel you don’t completely understand. For instance if you grew up middle to upper class maybe volunteer with at risk youth, if you haven't’ dealt with many health issues or death in your life then maybe a cancer center. Again focus on learning, pay attention to how people feel, approach the experience as a learning opportunity to fully understand the situation of people who you come across. Ask them inquisitive questions such as “if you could have any job what would it be”, “if you could change one thing in this world what would you change”, people love being listened to and thought provoking questions where they don’t have to tell you about their past are a great way to learn from a stranger. It might seem morbid when it involves learning from someone who is experiencing death but it’s not, you are approaching the situation with the honest will to learn and to become a better person for yourself and others.
Setting boundaries is often casually mentioned but usually only when you're already in a bad situation;for instance, someone will tell you “well, you should’ve set boundaries”. Don’t set boundaries in response to a specific situation, set boundaries completely based on yourself. Setting boundaries is associated with knowing yourself and what you don’t like. There are certain aspects to life that when they are at play we struggle to be happy, and these are different for everyone. To start, think of what happened today, yesterday, or last week that made you unhappy. Maybe your day was going well and then something happened. Exclude extraordinary events such as a car accident. For you it might be someone ignoring you when you were talking to them. If this truly made you unhappy and ruined the rest of your day then it’s worth setting a boundary for. A good correlating boundary might be that you don’t continue to talk to people who don’t listen to you. Depending on who the person is you might have to talk to them but when you notice that they aren’t listening you stop talking. Note that we can’t set an excessive amount of boundaries or else it has a crying wolf effect where others just can’t keep up or they start to prioritize your boundaries to figure out which ones you are the most serious about. You must be serious about all of your boundaries.
Notice that confidence was never discussed because it seems to just be a false sense of self and general awareness. Throughout history we have seen many ordinary people do extraordinary things so we know that no matter how much you train, study, and work you can still fail while others who do much less succeed. You must be smart in terms of learning about yourself, the world, and others. Then you don’t need confidence, you know what decision to make and no one can take that knowledge away from you. You have the power in your hands to live a happier and healthier life. You define what success means to you.
Love you and have a fantastic reduced stress day, if all else fails watch stand up comedy on YouTube or happy animal videos–if you are struggling to be happy might as well watch someone who is.
Citations
Mulhall, A. (1996). Cultural discourse and the myth of stress in nursing medicine. Int. J. Nurs. Stud. 33, 459. 10.1016