Are You Managing Your Stress or Is It Managing You?

You survived the hectic Season of Stress, otherwise known as the holidays. We are in the middle of January and everything is back to a calm pace and you are no doubt enjoying a relaxed winter season, right?

You’re not? What’s your problem? Everyone knows this picture is how all of us should be. If it isn’t, you need to be doing something to fix the problem – right now!

Sound familiar? That old sales pitch of somehow YOU have messed up and the only solution is to buy what someone is selling. If Madison Avenue has their way, we will forever be trying to keep up with the Jones’. The secret is that the Jones’ don’t really exist – but you do.

There IS a way to constructively handle stress.

Diagnosis Stress

As with any Health concern, the initial focus is on “Where is the problem located?” Yes, we can tabulate symptoms and come up with strategies to combat each one. A pill to relieve the pain of tight muscles, another pill or supplement to address the upset digestion (which may be a result of the previous pain medication), and the list goes on.

If this sounds helpful, you are in luck as we have an entire healthcare system that is designed specifically to chase symptoms all over creation.

If, however you have read to this point in the article, perhaps you think or hope that there is something better. I would like to propose a powerful alternative.

The Power of the Human

Human beings, while requiring some specific conditions from our environment, are incredibly robust and powerful creatures that manage a wide spectrum of living conditions. We have these amazing self-regulating systems onboard that allow us to operate in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.

Humans, like many other animals, have the ability to heal themselves. If we cut a finger, our bodies respond immediately and within a reasonably short time, the cut heals. We can assist the process from the outside by keeping the cut clean but it is our body that does the healing.

Surgery works the same way. Your body does the healing.

Add to the mix a brain that can profoundly help or hinder the healing process by just thinking about it, and you have a truly incredible self-sustaining organism.

So why aren’t we amazed by this every day? Maybe we are listening to the wrong sources.

Carpe Diem

My best prescription to anyone wanting to manage stress in their daily lives is to do just that: engage the stress.

1. Understand that you have power and influence over your life. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t work in your life is powerful stuff. With self-knowledge comes power.
2. Unplug from all of those sources that try to get you to believe that the peace and good that you seek is found outside of yourself. Peace within one’s self comes from inside, not from a pill, subscription, social media advice, or anything that can be bought. You own the solution.
3. Exercise your power. Let the stressors come and manage them accordingly. We can’t stop Life from being stressful but we can manage our responses to them. If managing stress involves healthy positive rewards (think: spa day or massage), please enjoy.

Stress Management is all about ownership. You can choose to buy into the angry-all-the-time approach to Life that never really gets around to delivering on the promise of feeling good about yourself. Or you can hold yourself responsible for things in Life that you can be responsible for AND letting yourself off the hook for the things that you cannot change.

It is your choice. Always.

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles.

– Doug Larson