Thanks for the question M. Have you ever noticed how two people can experience exactly the same situation, yet one becomes terribly stressed while the other seems to take it all in their stride? Perhaps they’re both stuck in a traffic jam and running late for an important appointment. One is gripping the steering wheel, getting angry and imagining all the terrible consequences of being late. The other puts on some music, makes a phone call to explain the delay and settles back to enjoy the ride. Same traffic jam, two very different experiences. What’s going on here?
We tend to believe that stress is caused by what’s happening around us. We blame our workload, our finances, our relationships, the traffic, or perhaps that difficult person we have to deal with. We say things like, “My boss is stressing me out,” or “The kids are driving me crazy.” But is that what’s really happening? The interesting thing is that nothing outside of us directly determines how stressed we become. It’s what we think about what’s happening that makes the difference.
Consider that traffic jam again. If I’m thinking, “This is terrible, I’m going to be late, everyone will be annoyed with me and my whole day is ruined,” I’m likely to become increasingly anxious and frustrated. But if I’m thinking, “There’s nothing I can do about the traffic, I’ll let them know I’m running late and get there when I can,” my experience will be quite different. The traffic hasn’t changed, my thinking has.
This doesn’t mean that life’s difficulties aren’t real, or that our bodies don’t respond automatically to danger, they certainly do. Nor does it mean we should simply think positively and pretend everything is wonderful when it isn’t. What it does mean is that we have far more influence over our experience of stress than we often realise.
Most of our stress comes from wanting things to be different from the way they are. We want people to behave differently, circumstances to change, problems to disappear and life to unfold according to our expectations. When reality doesn’t match the picture we have in our heads, we become frustrated, worried or angry, and here’s the trap. The more we try to control things over which we have little or no control, particularly other people, the more stressed we’re likely to become.
So, what’s the alternative? Start by asking yourself a simple question: “What am I telling myself about this situation?” Then ask, “Is it realistic” then ask yourself, “Is there another, more helpful way of looking at it?” Finally, consider what you can actually do to improve things, rather than exhausting your energy worrying about what you cannot change. We can’t always choose what happens to us, and changing our thinking isn’t always easy, but we can learn to choose how we interpret events and what we do next.
The greatest stress management skill we can develop is learning to distinguish between what we can control and what we can’t. After all, it’s not what’s happening in our lives that creates our greatest difficulties. It’s the story we tell ourselves about what’s happening, and that’s a story we can learn to change.