How Stress is Related to the Quality of Your Thinking

This past week my daughter had croup and we ended up in the emergency room.

She woke up at 3am and was struggling to breathe. She has had croup and infant asthma before and we have dealt with breathing issues in the past, but this was the worst I had seen yet. She was crying and throwing up because she could hardly get any oxygen.

We brought her to the emergency room and thankfully the medical team quickly had her breathing under control and we were able to come back home. The respiratory virus stuck around for a long 7 days after that.

I have always considered my daughter’s health to be my kryptonite to all of the training and education I’ve completed over the last 17 years to keep my mental well-being on an even keel.

I can handle pretty much anything mentally; except when my daughter gets sick.

I would rationalize to myself that it was stressful to see her unwell which would justify me feeling stressed and unwell.

This time something shifted.

I noticed my thoughts while my daughter was sick. I had racing thoughts that were stuck on repeat saying things such as, “I hate this”, “This is too much to bear”, “I’m glad we only had one kid because I can’t do this anymore”, “What if we didn’t make it to the hospital in time”, “Why is this happening to us”, etc. etc.

I noticed the thoughts were very much about what a hard time I was having and how much I hated the situation.

With all the work that I now do around thoughts, I wondered what it would be like to let go of my thinking in this situation.

I relaxed my body and I relaxed my mind. I let go of the racing thoughts that had been tormenting me for over a week.

The situation didn’t change. My daughter was still recovering. But I started to feel better about it all.

I started to feel lighter and more relaxed.

I realized everything was fine. Viruses are a part of life. We had handled what we needed to do in getting her to a doctor and she was getting better. The virus just needed to play its course and she would bounce back to her normal self.

She was getting better and there was nothing more for me to do, even though my thoughts had been stuck playing the worse-case scenarios for over a week.

My mind and my thoughts were clear and so finally I was able to see the situation clearly.

And when my mind was clear, I was better able to care for my daughter and better able to respond to whatever else was needed in the moment.

I remembered that of course we cannot control the uncontrollable. Stressful situations are bound to happen. As Georg Pransky says, Life is a full-contact sport.

But what I can control is how I respond. I can be aware of my of my state-of-mind and clear my racing thoughts so that I can be my best self in response to whatever life brings.

This is because we’re all living through the lens of our own personal thinking.

Have you ever noticed how people in your life handle stress differently? Within workplace teams, within families, and within global pandemics, there are variances in how people in our life respond to stress.

This is because we’re all experiencing the world through our own personal thinking.

And once we become aware of our personal thinking, then we can clear our mind and face whatever situations arise with a calm, content, and clear mind.

Needless to say my daughter is on the mend and with a clear mind I feel much more equipped to face whatever else comes my way.