Stress as a Choice: Part 2


I want to share a story with you. Back in 1989 I found my father dead in his bed. It was a shock since he was only 58 years old. I went through the grief, the funeral arrangements, the financials, the details of his apartment and furniture, dealing with my family, and all that comes with something like this. But it was also a spiritual experience.

It’s a long story so I’ll have to share that some other time. The moral of the story is that I came back to work as a project manager and I stood in amazement at the craziness all around me. People were all stressed out, meeting deadlines (Why is it called a dead line anyway?)… After having seen the whole picture, that none of us are gett’in out here alive, it seemed such a waste to be stressed out over such “small” stuff.

I'm not going to lay on my death bed and say, "I wish I would have been more stressed out." Success really is in the journey as well as the destination.

I saw the whole office stressed and I could never go back to that state of frantic. I could not, after stepping out of the fear, go back to it.

When calm in the midst of a workday, someone once asked me, “Aren’t you afraid of losing your job?” NO. What will happen if you lose your job? GET A NEW ONE. "You can't really mean that?" ACTUALLY I DO. They also thought because I did not stress out and act crazy that I didn’t care. There is a risk in letting go of stress.

Actually I was more productive than ever. Management finally saw this (with my help) but it was a long process. Bottom line is significance overtook material success. Substance overtook fear. I made a choice not to go back to a stress-based lifestyle. I was tired of living in fear. I considered life too short to be based on fear.

Fear is the feeling of stress.

It is the bodily response to the thoughts we think AND fear is only experienced in the future. Just as sadness is about loss which is the past.

For example: A tiger walks in the room and you feel what? FEAR. Why? Isn’t that in the future? Maybe he isn’t hungry, maybe just been fed and a tame tiger. Regardless, anytime we feel fear we are jumping to the future. You can plan for the future, but don’t live there.

I consider living in the future as neurotic since the future does not exist. If it does not exist, it is a fantasy. Wouldn’t that be neurotic – living in a fantasy?

What is even more incredible is that when we live in our own developed fantasy, why do we choose a negative one instead of a positive one? We could dream of how healthy and successful we are going to be instead of wondering how we are going to pay the mortgage, the bills, worrying about health problems not yet surfaced, etc., etc.