Entries from May 2007 ↓

I won’t be writing for a few more days, because I’m making major revisions to the site. I’m also trying to learn about writing WordPress themes so I can make the style of this blog compatible with the rest of the site. Wish me luck!

There’s a lot to learn and a lot to do. And the trick is to generate enough excitement about the project to motivate me without focusing so much on the final product that I become impatient and frustrated. So, Jean, Old Gal, enjoy learning and developing your skills. And enjoy the small successes along the way. The results will take care of themselves. In the fullness of time.

It seems to me that’s what optimizing stress is all about.

Last Monday Ronni Bennet at Time Goes By described a nightmare trip home on an airline. The whole tone of her post was just the opposite of yesterday’s post here. It was primarily complaining about the airlines. I suppose I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had at least taken some responsibility for her feet hurting. It had been her choice to wear impractical shoes.

I posted the following comment:
“The airlines are in trouble, so I’m afraid things are not going to get better soon. They’ve been downsizing and the workers are stressed, so don’t expect much catering. I keep thinking of J. K. Rowling’s, ‘Have a stout heart. The worst is yet to come.’

My husband and I won’t fly any more. We can live without it and have too much respect for our dignity.

I’m not sure I agree with your statement:
‘As the population ages in the coming years, air transportation must be improved for those who are slower or disabled.’  I’m only a couple of years older than you and can still remember the time when flying was not an entitlement. I’m not convinced it should be today. We all might be better off if we simplified our lives and reduced our expectations/demands.

In the meantime, good luck! I hope you wear more sensible shoes next time. When I used to travel as part of my work about 20 years ago, we always wore running shoes at airports. Even then we expected long walks and having to run to catch planes.”

I’m not saying we should never try to change things, but somehow complaining out of a sense of entitlement doesn’t work for me. I want to be doing something constructive to make this world a better place, not just demanding that other people do it for me.

In the last post I said the Stress Trap was “when we’re in a new and/or somewhat scary situation and our minds shut down. Our energy is diverted to our muscles so we can either fight or run. That’s not a very helpful reaction to most of the pressures we face in this modern world.”

I’ve been thinking of that a lot. And what I mean by the Stress Trap is much broader than that. My new definition goes more like this:

What is the stress trap? The stress trap is the belief that stress is something that happens to us from the outer world, that we are victims of external circumstances. It is wasting our time complaining about other people and our life circumstances, resenting things that have happened in the past, and scaring ourselves about what might happen in the future.

Stepping out of the stress trap is doing our best to see things clearly and adopting the attitude, “That’s the way things are, so what am I going to do about it?” Stepping out of the stress trap is taking responsibility for our lives. Responsibility doesn’t mean blame, it simply means choosing our response. And, hopefully, it means choosing a response that will lead to more effectiveness and joy.

What do you think?

A friend of mine, who hasn’t had much experience with computers, has been learning some software for editing and sending photos via e-mail. She managed to send a whole slide show last night, and we were both celebrating her success.

Then this morning she was going to ask me to send them to her husband, when he pointed out she could do it herself. That was one of those “Duh!” experiences when our mind gets stuck and it takes us a while to see the obvious. As she said, “Amazing, how anxiety turns the mind rigid. I see that all the time in clients.”

And that’s what exactly what I mean by the stress trap. It’s when we’re in a new and/or somewhat scary situation and our minds shut down. Our energy is diverted to our muscles so we can either fight or run. That’s not a very helpful reaction to most of the pressures we face in this modern world. Tomorrow we’ll start discussing more helpful responses.

Yesterday Puzzled commented: “I’m confused. What does this have to do with ‘optimizing stress’? So far this seems very nebulous.”

Thanks for the feedback, Puzzled. I looked at the whole site again and realize I don’t have enough information about Optimizing Stress. I like the fact that the site is fairly concise, so I don’t want to add more pages. On the other hand, this blog isn’t a good way to convey a large body of information.

So I’ve decided to offer some free e-pamphlets on the subject. The first one will be Stepping Out of the Stress Trap, and I’m about to start writing it. I will send you a copy as soon as it’s done. I’ll probably need a couple more pamphlets as background information, then it will be easy to connect the blogs with what we’re trying to achieve here.

So, enough for now. I’m off to write that pamphlet!

Yea, Cyn! In her final comment yesterday Cyn wrote:
“I don’t want to define my selfworth by the WORK I get done. I just want to BE & enjoy just being me.”

That’s why I’m doing an interactive blog rather than just writing articles. Notice I didn’t tell Cyn what to do, she went from (1) wanting to control her husband to (2) saying she fights with her husband because of self-worth issues, to (3) saying she’d be better off doing work that made her feel good about herself, to (4) saying she wants to enjoy herself just the way she is. She doesn’t want her self-worth to be dictated by what she work does.

I didn’t do much at all, just asked a couple of questions for her to think about. There are gazillion books out there telling us how we can improve our lives. We’re fortunate to have them at our disposal, but they won’t do much until

• we tune into ourselves and see what we really want,
• notice if what we’re doing now is getting us closer to what we want, and, if not,
• do something else.

That’s a big part of the process. Another part, if we so choose, is to remember to keep doing it. Hopefully, that’s an important part of this website, to have supporters interested in what we’re trying. Please keep us posted, Cyn!

I’m adding another item to the traits of stress-hardy people:

They understand that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention.

Cyn commented on yesterday’s post, where I asked if the need to be right came from the need for self worth, by saying, “Very true. My self worth is at stake. But differences of opinion make life interesting. How much more interesting I could be, if I weren’t always defending my opinions.”

I agree! If we’re really trying to optimize the stress in our lives and become more stress hardy then it might make more sense to find another way to do it, a way in which you have a better chance of getting what you want. Reacting against things we don’t want keeps us stuck. Focusing on what we want and finding small steps to move us in that direction is empowering.

If you and your husband like fighting, Cyn, go for it. If not, try something else. What do you think?

Linda Salazar at Awaken the Genie Within has a relevant post on The Need to Be Right. That, of course, was one of the points of Cyn’s comments to the last post:
“If [my] husband agrees with me, he says nothing. Often he disagrees. (difference of opinion)
Then it’s an argument; each trying to prove I’m right. We both can be right, but we fight for our point. I never argue with anyone, but my husband.”

Linda ends her post with: “After all, would you rather be right or happy?” The truth is, a lot of people would rather be right. My guess is they think their self-worth is at stake. What do you think?

This is the section where we’ll be exploring ways of optimizing the stress in our lives. For starters, please let me know your reaction to this whole idea. Even if it’s “That’s the dumbest idea I ever heard in my life!” In that case, of course, it would help if you were a bit more specific.

Thanks!