It is all in how you look at things

I have marveled at the word "stress" for many years.  It is a huge dumping ground for emotions and perspectives that could be called something else.  We quickly just say that we are stressed out, or that a situation is making me stress out or that certain things are stressful.  I am certainly not discounting that there is indeed stress in our lives but I started to look at the word and how it was being used several years ago when I read about a parking lot attendant talk about how stressed out she was everyday.  She was sitting in a booth in an underground parking lot, alone, stressing out.  It dawned on me that stress is increased or intensified by your own perceptions and your own thoughts.  If you decide you are going to be overwhelmed then you usually are getting what you fear the most - what if you change your mind?

G.K. Chesterton wrote a great couple of passages about looking at things differently.  One is about being at a train station and hearing adults complain about having to wait for a train.   He makes us sit back and think about whether you have ever heard a little boy complain about having to hang about the station and wait for a train?  Probably not because the station is a place of wonder and "poetical pleasures" to a child.  Isn't this the same situation for both people with different views on the experience?  His second passage I loved was about an adult trying to open a sticking bedroom bureau drawer.  Every day it was jammed and completely annoying to have to pull open.  The frustrations were coming from a perception that the drawer was supposed to be easy to open, it should be easy to pull out.  What if you imagine yourself pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, then the struggle becomes exciting instead of exasperating.  Or what if you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea or a climber in a crevass in the Swiss Alps.  Does that make the experience different?

I find myself getting "stressed out" when I get overloaded in a quick period of time - when things come at me so fast that I cannot process the information, organize the information or when it is just over the top too much.  Maybe too much is just too much.  

Why get stressed out in traffic?  It does not help to reduce the traffic or the time spent sitting in traffic.  Stress does not make you not late for a meeting - it just makes you stressed.  Apologize for being late and then leave earlier the next time and don't be late again.  It is disrespectful.

I certainly won't say that the world is not feeling a little "stressful" these days with the price of oil, the crazy markets, the unemployment rate etc.  I don't think I have a panacea for all of those factors but I can say that you can change your mind and that is a very powerful thing.  

I have been concerned for a long time that I don't have a favorite saying that sort of sums up my life or my favorite spiritual saying to guide me.  A bible passage, a quote from Aristotle, an I Ching saying - something to put it out there.  This was actually a bit stressful to me because I felt pressure to have some profound statement in my life.  Well it turns out that I do have one, it just is not what you would call sophisticated - 

"there ain't no Coupe de Ville hiding in the bottom of your Cracker Jack box" - Meatloaf.