Coping with Stress
I think it’s safe to say that everyone experiences daily stressors. Everyone feels stressed to some degree every single day! And we all cope with it in different ways. I recently had a conversation with some friends about how they cope with stress, it was interesting to see that some prefer to face the situation (or stressor) right on and take care of it. Others completely avoid it by procrastination or distracting themselves with other things, pushing the stressor to the very back of their mind.
Stress can be both good and bad. Distress is a debilitating type of stress, it comes by way of a threat to people and causes fear and anxiety. Eustress is a motivating form of stress, it comes as a challenge and brings us to push ourselves to accomplish something to be proud of. An important question to ask yourself when faced with a stressful situation would be, “is this a challenge or a threat?”. In most cases, whatever is causing you stress can be a challenge. Recognizing it as such will help change your perspective and motivate you to conquer the task. Changing your thought process will make all the difference! Thoughts create feelings and feelings are what lead to actions. So, if you think encouraging thoughts when faced with a stressful situation, you will feel motivated and finally be able to accomplish something to be proud of.
Changing your thought process and coping effectively with stress does not come naturally. It takes a conscious effort. On hams.cc, there is an article called, “The Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking”.
The first form is “all-or-nothing thinking”. This is the idea that every time something goes wrong (no matter how small and trivial), it becomes a disaster. One example I’ve seen a lot is when a student wakes up late for school and decides they’ve already failed for the day and there is no reason to try and go late. Twisted, right? Yet we do it all the time. Maybe instead of thinking of one mistake ruining everything, we could turn them into lessons and give ourselves a chance to do better next time. In the words of Bob Ross, “there’s no such thing as mistakes, just happy accidents”. When he makes a mistake in his painting, he simply turns it into a happy tree or a happy cloud instead of throwing all his good work away and starting over. Perhaps we could do the same thing in our lives.
Another form of twisted thinking I’d like to touch on is, “should-thinking”. This is always thinking about what one should know, act like, feel, dress, etc. There are situations when the word should is used appropriately, and those are when describing the laws of nature (i.e. if I let go of my own in the air, it should fall), and when describing the laws of God. Otherwise, what decides why we should meet expectations that in most cases are simply too high? The counteract for should-thinking would be going a little easier on oneself and not dwelling in the past. I often find myself making too high of expectations for myself. And when I don’t meet such expectations, I can only feel worse. Focusing on the positive things and achievable goals and expectations will do a lot for us.
Stress can be both good and bad. Distress is a debilitating type of stress, it comes by way of a threat to people and causes fear and anxiety. Eustress is a motivating form of stress, it comes as a challenge and brings us to push ourselves to accomplish something to be proud of. An important question to ask yourself when faced with a stressful situation would be, “is this a challenge or a threat?”. In most cases, whatever is causing you stress can be a challenge. Recognizing it as such will help change your perspective and motivate you to conquer the task. Changing your thought process will make all the difference! Thoughts create feelings and feelings are what lead to actions. So, if you think encouraging thoughts when faced with a stressful situation, you will feel motivated and finally be able to accomplish something to be proud of.
Changing your thought process and coping effectively with stress does not come naturally. It takes a conscious effort. On hams.cc, there is an article called, “The Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking”.
The first form is “all-or-nothing thinking”. This is the idea that every time something goes wrong (no matter how small and trivial), it becomes a disaster. One example I’ve seen a lot is when a student wakes up late for school and decides they’ve already failed for the day and there is no reason to try and go late. Twisted, right? Yet we do it all the time. Maybe instead of thinking of one mistake ruining everything, we could turn them into lessons and give ourselves a chance to do better next time. In the words of Bob Ross, “there’s no such thing as mistakes, just happy accidents”. When he makes a mistake in his painting, he simply turns it into a happy tree or a happy cloud instead of throwing all his good work away and starting over. Perhaps we could do the same thing in our lives.
Another form of twisted thinking I’d like to touch on is, “should-thinking”. This is always thinking about what one should know, act like, feel, dress, etc. There are situations when the word should is used appropriately, and those are when describing the laws of nature (i.e. if I let go of my own in the air, it should fall), and when describing the laws of God. Otherwise, what decides why we should meet expectations that in most cases are simply too high? The counteract for should-thinking would be going a little easier on oneself and not dwelling in the past. I often find myself making too high of expectations for myself. And when I don’t meet such expectations, I can only feel worse. Focusing on the positive things and achievable goals and expectations will do a lot for us.
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