Stress Weapons

Quotes, memes, and blogs about reducing stress are everywhere you look these days. I imagine that you are like me. You probably use that word more than you realize. When someone asks me how I feel, the word stressed may just pop out without considering how I am really feeling. In today's world, the word "stress" may just have taken over for the word "fine" when someone asks us how we are doing.??

As a community, we have been through a lot since March 2020. There is almost too much to list and since we have all been through it together, I think I can skip the long list. The fact is that the challenges around us can make an impact on how we approach every day.?

Last week, I decided to take the word stress out of my language. If you are to define stress, you will find that it is as simple as how your body reacts to situations and life events that feel out of our control. Now that I have defined it, I can ask myself, is stress what I actually feel when I say I am stressed out???

Taking the word stress out of my vocabulary required me to look deeper into what I was really feeling, and it was hard. I mean really hard! Suddenly, I noticed how often people said they were stressed or called how they were feeling stressed. I am not saying that they were not really stressed. I am not saying I wasn't stressed.? I noticed that it seemed to take away my power to control it when saying I was stressed.??

You may be wondering what words I used instead of stress?? At first, I found that I defined my feelings more often as tired or worried. These were most definitely accurate. As the week wore on, the words and my emotions became more evident. I actually had more control over how I showed up. If I was tired, I would seek to pace myself better, walk around a little more. If I was feeling worried, I learned to seek out time to consider the problem or talk to the right person about the potential resolution of the issue.?

The most eye-opening experience was that my stress reactions often came out sideways when I was just calling it "stress."? When I worked to determine the root of what I was feeling, I had more control. I was still feeling the pressure of the situations around me, but it became less difficult to handle.??

This Monday, consider the power of this quote. "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another," William James.