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and Introduction
Stress is probably the most overused and misused word in the English
language with the possible exception of the word love. There is no
doubt in my mind that the way we think about stress has to be
changed if we are really going to take charge of our own lives.
A WORD FOR ALL SEASONS
Stress is a lot of things to a lot of people:
It’s a noun - - “I’m under a lot of stress.” (Like a box?)
It’s a verb - - “You stress me out.” (Like stretch me out?)
It’s an adjective - - “I have a high stress job.” (Busy? Pressure?
Worker problems?)
It’s a physical condition - - “I have a high stress level” (Blood
pressure up? Ulcers? Angry?)
It’s a situation - - Here is a description I just read in a recent
national article on stress. “The stress of having two children.”
(Funny – I always called it the joy of having two children. If you
have children do you actually get up every morning and say, “Oh
nuts. There you are again”?)
It’s a way of living - - “She leads a stressful lifestyle.” (Works
eighteen hours a day? Stays up late? Plays eighteen hours a day?)
What has happened is that the word stress now seems to stand for all
kinds of things. Stress has gone from a physiological process where
certain hormones are released into the body causing certain
reactions within the body, to some vague malevolent force running
rampant in life. In fact stress now means so many different things,
I don’t think it means anything at all. And yet we blame stress for
most of our problems.
A Part of Life?
If you have ever been to a stress seminar you have probably heard
the following statement, (usually given by some scholarly looking
individual who has just taken off his or her glasses in an effort to
look even more profound):
“Stress is part of life. (Pause) The only
people who don’t have stress are . . . dead people.”
To be honest, the first time I heard that statement, I thought,
“That’s a rock and a hard place, stress or dead.” I took stress! I
wasn’t quite sure what this stress was that I was choosing, but I
was pretty sure I knew what dead was.
Good Stress: What a Concept!
Of course the stress experts always try to lessen the blow of the
“stress is part of life” mentality by saying that there is good
stress as well as bad stress...
Let me ask you – does anyone in real
life talk about good stress and bad stress? Has anyone ever come up
to you and said,
“Oh I am so excited about this afternoon. There’s a
lot of good stress coming in”?
Can you imagine sitting next to
someone at lunch who says, “I’m so stressed out,” and then you ask,
“Good stress or bad stress?” He’d probably whack you one for asking
a dumb question.
As goofy as most of us are, even we don’t talk that
nonsense. To call events, which are profoundly different, good
stress and bad stress muddies even further the concept of stress. It
also keeps the seat of power totally with the events, and it
minimizes our role in how we define the events in our lives. . .
Stress isn’t “out there.”
What is “out there”? Situations!
What is “out there”? Life!
Don’t worry, I’m not going to start singing, “Everything is
beautiful.” I don’t think everything is beautiful. There are a lot
of situations “out there” that are not so beautiful. It still does
not take away from the fact that we define how any given situation
affects us. We are not limited to just responding to the power that
is supposedly intrinsic in the events of our lives. We actually give
power to or take power away from these events.
Stress Tests: Poor Science
One way these experts promote the idea that stress is in the events
of our lives is through stress tests. If you have ever gone to a
stress seminar or had a stress expert come to your place of
business, you have probably taken a stress test. For those of you
unfamiliar with these stress tests (not to be confused with the
treadmill runs which check out your heart), they look like this:
A
list of life events - the tests often call them “stressors” - with
corresponding stress points assigned to each item. You check off the
events that have happened to you, add up the corresponding points
and, voila, you can figure out how screwed up or stressed out you
are.
I think these tests are not only poor science and a waste of time,
but they actually perpetuate some incredibly ineffective ways of
looking at life.
First of all these tests are bogged down in the problem of the
vagueness of stress. What is this stress that is supposedly in the
events being measured on the test? Whatever it is, it must be able
to be measured, since there are different points assigned to the
stress levels. . . This science, I believe, is very suspect.
30 Points of Stress on Tuesday – Thursday – Friday, etc.
If I weigh a chair and find that it weighs five pounds, I understand
that the five pounds is in the chair. The plastic, metal, wood and
fabric make up the weight. The chair weighs five pounds on Monday
morning, on Thursday evening, and so on.
If I say some event has
thirty points of stress, I am implying that the thirty points of
stress are in the event just as the weight is in the chair. And it
must be constant. The event must have thirty points of stress on
Tuesday morning, on Thursday night and so on.
This is goofy! Think about it.
Have you ever had to deal with the same situation
at two different times? One time you handled it like a champ, and
another time like a raving lunatic? Do you have kids?
If so, you know what I’m talking about.
On Tuesday night your kid
spills something all over the carpet and you take the “Mr. Rogers’
Neighborhood” approach saying “Let’s clean it up together! Can you
spell disaster?” On Thursday night, however, it’s the Atilla the Hun
approach, and you scream, “CAN’T YOU GET THROUGH ONE MEAL?”
In other
words the event did not seem to have the same impact on Tuesday
night as it did on Thursday. So what’s the point of saying something
is a 30-point stress event if there can be such different reactions
to it? What does this stress level really mean? Your guess is as
good as mine.
D-I-V-O-R-C-E
Here is my favorite example to show you how dumb this type of
thinking is. Usually near the top of the stress list in all of these
stress test is divorce, or should I say DIVORCE!
These numbers can
vary, but it works something like this. At the top of the page you
see DIVORCE and 200 stress points jump off the test at you. The
directions have already stated that if you get 300 points of stress
for the entire test you probably need major psychological help. AND
there are three more pages of stress events left in the test!
Considering the divorce rate, at least half of the room is going,
“I’m dead in the water. I just shot two-thirds of my stress wad on
one question.” Heck, there’s probably quite a few people groaning,
“I’ve been divorced twice! I’m already over my limit, and I just
started the test.” Yet, quite interestingly, a few of these same
people are also saying, “I thought I felt pretty good. Maybe I’m a
mess and just don’t know it.”
If you insist on playing the game that the power in life is in the
events of life, a game I don't like to play, you have to be
consistent. Haven’t you ever seen a marriage to which you would
assign 200 points of stress?
The divorce got rid of it!
You can go into any courtroom at the end of a divorce and one person
will be sobbing, "My life is over," while the other one will be
elatedly shouting, "Yesss!! I'm outta here."
To say one event is the same for everyone is absurd.
Events are just events until we bring them meaning.
We Bring the Meaning to the Events in Our Lives
Two people lose loved ones.
One survivor sees the event as a punishment from God or a
shaft from the Universe.
He or she becomes totally
overwhelmed or angry or depressed and can’t seem to
get past it.
The other person sees the event as a loss that must be faced,
something that happens in life whether we want it or not.
He or she grieves and might feel many things (including anger, sadness, and loneliness) but then seems to not only survive
but thrive.
We bring the meaning to the events in our lives.
You walk by a small garden with a child.
You barely notice the garden.
The child is enthralled.
Same garden – Different reactions.
We bring the meaning to the events in our lives.
Does it really matter how we define stress?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Actually
it makes all the difference.
If we see stress “out there” we are
putting the power out there. If we see stress as situational (a mean
boss, a big test, raising two kids), then we miss the deeper issues.
If I am looking at a stressful lifestyle as the cause of my problem,
I am looking in the wrong place. If I look at my belief system, I
might have a better chance of modifying what needs to be modified. I
might have a better chance of being in charge.
That is why I talk about rekindling our spirits as an alternative to
managing stress.
Managing our stress sounds like a lesson on how to be organized with
our misery. Rekindling the spirit is a reminder of something beyond
the mundane.
I truly believe our spirits are not broken by the crises in our
lives. What kills our spirits is an ongoing attitude about life, an
ongoing negative emotional state that fails to see the power in us
and the beauty of life around us.
That is also why I talk about taking charge of our lives. It is not
just an idle phrase.
Taking charge of our lives is a call to action. Taking charge says I
have the power, not the event.
How you define that power is up to you. It might be your concept of
God, or it might be psychological principles or oneness with the
universe. It is critical that you look to see if your belief system
is matched up to the way you live your life. If I say, “The power of
God is in me,” and then I blame you for screwing up my day, I am
either forgetting about the power of God, ignoring it or saying that
you are much more powerful than my concept of God.
When we don’t acknowledge our own power we develop some strange
strategies to deal with “stress” or what I call difficult
situations. In fact, most times instead of developing strategies, we
just get off on being miserable.
Go to Chapter 2:
STRATEGIES FOR STRESS?
- FIGHTING TO STAY MISERABLE
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