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Today's
Meditation:
So much of
our stress is caused by the ways that we react to
things. Perhaps all of it is-- I don't know. I
know from experience, though, that when I feel stressed
it's usually because of the ways that I'm looking at
certain situations rather than because of the situations
themselves. Stress is what happens to me when my
thoughts convince me that there's something terrible or
negative in a given situation, something that I have to
fear or that I think I'm not going to be able to handle on
my own.
When
we stop resisting what life gives to us-- when we stop
fearing the worst out of any given situation-- then our
stress no longer exists. If I don't fear the results
of a certain something, then I'm going to approach that
certain something in a different way than I would if I
were fearful of, or even nervous about it.
I
have a strategy when I'm teaching high school. It's
an extremely stressful job, as much for the administrative
garbage that goes on as for the students themselves.
I would always feel stressed when I was walking to school,
and I didn't like that, so I decided to reframe my walk to
school. Instead of hoping for the best and hoping
that nothing terrible would happen, I told myself during
my walk, "I get to spend the next eight hours with a
whole bunch of very cool young people who are trying to
become the best people they can be, and I get to help them
do that." The stress left me, replaced by
enthusiasm and energy.
Our
stress often is our choice. When I was in the Army,
I put myself in every stressful situation I could because
I figured it was good training for the rest of my life--
if
the stressful situations in the Army didn't destroy me,
the chances that the rest of the world could throw me
something worse were very small, indeed. So if we are
causing (or significantly contributing to) our own stress,
then it's time to do what a doctor once advised me:
knock the crap off and get on with our lives.
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