dream | act | succeed

And here we are again, still trying to deal with all that stress that is coming our way. But what is stress? Just a concept in our minds? Something the human race has invented in order to do just nothing for a while? Well, I am not an expert, but I don’t think so! The stress is real, even if our bodies are not showing any symptoms.

On a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the most stressful thing ever, where is your average stress level? Are you stressed out quite frequently? Does these things get to your mind? Disturbing your sleep? Making you feel more uncomfortable?

For me, the stress always comes with clear indicators. The symptoms appear and I know what is going on! There is no need to talk it away! Or to hide! But there are different kinds of stress I experience! Positive stress, negative stress, short term stress, long term stress. I guess that’s the reason why we are so stressed all the time! There are so many ways to be stressed, how should we even find out from which kind of stress we are currently suffering from?

Can not knowing the kind of stress you are experiencing causing even more stress?

The question is not how to detect stress, but rather how to use these powerful sources of energy. How can we use the stress and turn it into something beautiful? A butterfly? Probably not! But something as beautiful, right? Sure!

The next time you are feeling the stress rising up in your body, ask yourself some stupid questions about it. You can ask yourself, if the stress you are experiencing might be male or female, old or very young, educated or not and stuff like this!? This sounds silly? Yes! It does! But it brakes the ice! Believe me! Once we have understood that stress is nothing to actually be afraid of, we can start to work with it, rather than against it.

The secret behind turning something stressful into something positive is not even a secret! We simply need to find out what causes the reaction, and then, depending on the reason find the right method to deal with it. But let’s do some examples here.

You have this business presentation coming up! There will be your boss and a lot of other very important people from the executive board sitting around the table! Are you stressed out already? Hell yeah, you are! Of course you are stressed, nervous, excited! You can’t sleep very good, you are constantly thinking about it and stuff like this!

Well, this is of course just your body and mind reacting to what seems to be going on! Of course you need to experience the stress, I mean, it’s really stressful! But is it?

Your body might start to freak out! Your mind goes like crazy! Showing you the most horrible of outcomes the presentation can have! Can you already feel the cold sweat? Well, if so, let’s tackle it!

Now that you are in this very situation, ask yourself what is really triggering the stress! Is it the fact to talk in front of people? Is it your boss? Is it the reason that there is so much depending on this? Is it the topic of the presentation? Is it the language the presentation will be in? There might be thousands of reasons why this situation might cause a certain amount of stress in our bodies. For some even unbelievable high doses of stress! And sure, if you are lucky, you tick a couple of those boxes, if not all of them!

But now that we have started to break the situation down into little pieces, well, actually, it doesn’t seem to be the presentation itself that is causing the stress, but all those other points. It might be the unfamiliarity, it might be the pure fact about talking in front of other people. It can be whatever it is.

The moment you understand this, something will change. You will not look at the whole damn thing as something stressful, but rather see the stress only in certain parts of it. Lets just assume it’s the fact that you need to talk in English. Can you practice talking? Can you practice English? Sure! But hardly until tomorrow! You can learn it for next time! But in this case, this is not really an option! So, what else should we do? What about realizing that all the other people in the room can not speak in English that good either? Is that helping? Maybe for a short time! But what we need is something more!

We need to turn this situation around. You need to look at this thing and ask yourself what’s the problem! Take a piece of paper and write it down! What is the very thing/ what are the very things that are causing you to experience the stress. Well, and then you just pick one of them after the other and make them less powerful! This sounds so easy! Maybe even too easy! But that is how you do it!

For years, I simply accepted the way it was. But then, one day, I had enough! The most of the time we worry too much! Our minds go from one thing to the other, over exaggerating things whenever we can! But there is no need to do so! Life moves on! The world doesn’t stop turning for you! And in fact, we think about things, other people do not even notice! Why? Because they have their own problems and things in life. Maybe your boss is as stressed out as you are, because she needs to proof to everyone every single day that she is the boss. Well, we don’t actually care, but she doesn’t understands this.

We think that we have no power, but our opponents think the very same way. Therefore it’s not important what we think, but how we react to things and deal with them. And sure, knowing that the others struggle as well is always helping. And believe me! Everyone of us needs to go trough stuff! Life is not always as promising as Insta & Co. are trying to show us!

Understand why you are experiencing stress, break the process down into little pieces and tackle them one at a time! That’s how you do it! And well, if you were looking for a short cut, or a life hack, or something like this, forget it! There is non! You need to go through this!

See you next time!