#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personalitytransformation
Everyone in the world constantly experiences stress. It can be so overwhelming that a person starts to feel like they’re dying, suffering intensely. And every day, they realize they can't cope with it.
Today, we’re not just going to talk about what stress is; we’re going to find one very simple action that will help you significantly minimize your suffering and stress levels.
Unconscious Stress
When I look back at the concept of stress in myself or anyone else, stress is quite an unconscious construct in terms of the word.
What is stress?
Every person will describe a state of stress differently. It will have its own meaning. Each of us has 24 hours in a day, but time moves differently for everyone. What I mean is this: one person might have 10 thoughts a minute, while another might have just one. One person might perform 100 actions in a day, while another might do 5. So, one person could be in a state of stress all day (and that stress could be very strong!), while another might be partially stressed or not stressed at all.
You should only be in a state of stress when it’s necessary or unavoidable.
For instance, when it’s directly related to a life-threatening situation: a tiger or bear appears before you, you break a leg while hiking, or something unexpected happens to a loved one. There are things that cause us to enter a state of stress for valid reasons. It’s often said that it’s not bad to be in this state: if you see a tiger, you need to try to reduce your stress. However, it’s likely that the physical body and many of its reactions can’t be fooled. Or, in such a case, you’d need constant training: seeing a tiger 200 or 300 times, but I’m afraid if that happens, at some point the tiger will eat the person.
We shift into stress mode when, for example, we say we’ve moved to another country, like I did to the USA, and I feel stressed. Or someone says they changed jobs and feels overwhelmed, or they feel stressed at their current job, or they experience mental tension every day when they come home, or they get stressed because they have kids – there are many scenarios.
Recently, my wife was talking to a girl who said, “Listen, we’ve got three kids visiting, so now there are seven kids in total, and I need to find some time.” Her acquaintance replied, “I don’t understand how you handle seven kids, how you even manage to deal with them all? I can barely feed my two-year-old and my husband.” When recounting this story, my wife smirked, noting that it’s absolutely basic. Here we have two completely different people. One feels at ease surrounded by seven kids who need feeding or reacting to their states, while the other gets very nervous. Each of us has a different threshold for what triggers stress.
So, the first rule to accept and understand is that your stress state is generally unique: in volume, set, and quality.
However, how do we usually act? When someone comes to us and shares a problem, we typically respond with, “Oh, that’s just like me.” They might say, “I felt awful yesterday, stressed all day,” or “I moved to another country and I’m stressed out...,” or “I feel stressed at work every day,” or “I have an issue with my boss” – we will respond to any of these scenarios with, “That’s just like me.” What does the person want? They want to find someone with a similar stress state and understand that they are not alone with this feeling. In reality, you are alone with your own stress. Recognizing and understanding this allows you to see what to do next.
Today, I will tell you what needs to be done to move forward with stress.
No “Good” or “Bad” Stress
It’s important to understand that there is no such thing as “good” or “bad” stress. This division of the state itself shifts our own perception of reality – it’s like self-deception.
Let’s say I call some stress “positive” and support it because I’ve found some justification for it: for example, it will help me grow in the future.
And I call another stress “negative” because it shouldn’t occur in me.
If you approach dealing with stress, or life with stress, or changing your life situation from this angle of dividing stress, you’re likely to hit a dead end and, most probably, deceive yourself. You won’t be able to make any reasonable division, perhaps it’s even impossible.
This is a person’s justification when they say, “Okay, I will live this bad life because I need to live it, it’s karma, but I won’t live this bad life because it’s karma. Can you tell me if it’s karma, and then I will start living or not living this life.” You go and are told, “Okay, it’s your karma, live it.” And at that moment, what should happen to you? Should the stress disappear, or should you calm down? After all, a person wants to positively justify the presence of stress to calm down.
To “calm down” implies the absence of stress.
A calm state is the absolute opposite of being in a state of stress. If you feel calm, you are not in a state of stress.
There is no stress, and when you say that this stress is positive, you are trying to justify the stress itself. But you won’t be able to do that because self-justification won’t lead to a good, pure state in which you will be calm.
Stress is some form of anxiety, a sense of worry, some doubts, bad thoughts, and a state of physical tension. It’s a combination of various sensations, and every person will diagnose it differently.
You shouldn’t divide stress into “positive” and “negative.” Instead, ask yourself this question: “Can I, each day, perform certain actions that will make each of my days feel increasingly calm, confident, progressive, and full of a good, peaceful life?”
Rather than fighting these states, because the more a person fights negative states, the more these negative states will develop and live. The fight itself and the resistance will have the exact opposite effect.
A Calm Approach to Life
The first thing you need to do is stop fighting it and calmly tell yourself that no matter what happens, good or bad, that you face during the day, you can be in a very calm state, and that state can be very stressful.
You don't have to fight this stress, but rather find the causes and see how you can make it so that events that cause stressful states don't happen in your life. That's one side of it.
On the other side, how can you learn to calmly perceive the various difficult circumstances of your life and treat them the same way? What does "calm" mean?
For example, we are shooting a video on the street and a plane flies by, interrupting the sound. You can react negatively and get stressed out because you'll immediately think that this will ruin the video, that this is an inconvenient place, and you can start generating stress towards the operator and producer who decided to shoot at this location without ensuring quiet. You can direct stress at them because, for example, you don't have any extra noise-canceling equipment on your microphone.
Or you can just stop for a couple of minutes while the plane passes and take it calmly or tell yourself, "If planes fly too often, let's not shoot outside but move to another space."
So, take it calmly. It turns out that when dealing with stress, two directions emerge:
- On the one hand, we learn to calmly live through difficult circumstances in life.
- On the other hand, we work on the causes that are sources of stress and live through the state calmly, as in the example of a flying plane.
When the plane is already flying, take a pause or understand that there's nothing wrong if the sound in some video becomes slightly worse; it won't change anything significantly.
If you work on the causes in advance, understand before going outside that there is a chance that cars will drive by, animals will run, planes will fly, and maybe something else will happen. Understand this in advance, and tell yourself in advance how you will feel and react to various situations.
Conscious Perception
The thing is, the human system is arranged in such a way that if we generally perceive and understand some things, we will treat them much more calmly in the future, including how our brain perceives them. I'm not even talking about the whole spiritual system of a person. If I agree with the team that is shooting how we will behave if a plane flies by: the team will point it out to me or I will notice it myself. But I will continue to speak, and it's no big deal if the audio is worse at some point or I will stop and retell. And just the fact that we foresee this a little in advance and discuss that there's a chance of some bad event happening will minimize or neutralize stress because all parties discussed it.
In essence, it doesn't matter; why stress about it?
Stress kills, degrades a person, destroys their mental state and physical body, their spiritual system. It destroys!
Because if I get worked up and enter a negative state due to a flying plane, I can quarrel with everyone present. Then my wife will come, and I'll argue with her, and the kids. Then I'll argue with my business partners, colleagues, employees, go somewhere in the evening and argue there too. Enter a state of "bad" stress, sleep poorly, not get enough sleep, and start a massive chain reaction. Start doing things in a state of stress and do them poorly. "I need to assemble a playground today" – assemble it poorly. "I need to conduct a session with a person and help them" – and do it poorly. Spend the evening at home with the kids – and do it unsatisfactorily. Continue shooting videos in irritation and, of course, do it poorly. This is what triggers a crazy reaction.
Any other person would say, "Wait, Alexander, you mean to say that stress is categorically unnecessary and that it's only bad. But how should a person go through and live through difficult events in life and develop through them?"
One does not exclude the other. The most important thing is not to confuse them but to clearly realize and accept that stress is bad and destroys our system.
I Am the Cause of My Own Stress
Is it possible for a person on planet Earth in the society of the 21st century to live in a state of complete absence of stress throughout their life until death? Practically impossible. When I say "practically," it means it's impossible for most people. For 9 million 999 thousand out of 10 million, it's unachievable, meaning it's impossible for most people. For all of us, the absence of it is impossible. But it's important to know that its presence doesn't destroy.
But if we live in society, we sometimes experience such a state, which indeed has causes. And these causes are primarily related to yourself.
There are reasons why you experience stress.
On the other hand, you need to live through this bad event. And this is where you decide whether to experience a state of stress or learn to cope and react calmly to this state when it arises – at the moment it appears or afterward. You can catch it at the very beginning, as I did with the flying plane.
I tracked it, I did it, I lived through it, and I even talked about it as an example. You can catch it afterward. That is, get worked up, enter a state of stress, but then do some reflection, recognize that you entered a state of stress, start observing and tracking it. There are many different techniques on how to do this, which many people talk about.
There are countless situations where a person, living through stress, actually generates it themselves. These are not even external events that happened.
For example, I was at a Madonna concert in San Francisco yesterday and parked my car on the street. I know that they break windows in San Francisco, and roughly every part of the concert, I took screenshots of my car. My car has the ability to take full shots from all cameras. I looked at where my car was and saw that everything seemed to be fine around it. Around the fourth or fifth screenshot, it was already midnight, the concert was coming to an end, and it seemed to me that the right window was broken. I experienced a state of stress and fear, and at that moment, the concert became unimportant; what mattered was what really happened to the car. How would I get home, since I live in Silicon Valley, slightly south of San Francisco, a 40-minute drive away? What did I do?
This state was already impossible to cope with because it was night, and you understand that you're entering some difficulties. To get rid of the stress, I reviewed the previous screenshots from the camera and realized they were exactly the same: it just seemed to me in the last screenshot that the window was broken.
Essentially, I generated the state of stress and fear myself. This, of course, put my system in a bad state; on a physical level, I felt very bad. I managed to cope with it quickly, although the remnants of this state lasted until I approached the car. I walked around it, saw that everything was fine, and thought, "Thank God." And I thought once again that I try to leave the car in a place where nothing can happen to it. Because every time I leave my car on the street in San Francisco, I immediately feel some anxiety.
So what are we coming to? To the fact that there are things you can deal with in advance.
If a person knows in advance that they may experience and generate a state of anxiety or some stress, they can also minimize the occurrence of such events. When such events occur, they need to try to live through them calmly.
For example, what can be stressful for me? Every time I talk to viewers about the importance of liking and subscribing, it stresses me out. As much as I talk about it, it causes me stress and some internal changes. A like is a kind of internal feeling of gratitude. Otherwise, it turns out we have no gratitude towards others who take some actions. For example, making videos. It's an incredibly big job.
Let me give an example of stress that many people experience when their phone rings. A close one calls and says that we urgently need to talk, or a problem occurred, or sends a message saying "A problem occurred" and disappears. At this moment, it is very important to remember how I act in relation to others. Do I approach people from the state that a problem occurred when often there is no problem?
For many years, I experienced stress when my mom called me. When she called, I immediately felt that something happened. There were reasons for this: once in childhood and later in youth, I went through some events when someone called me and reported a problem. When someone calls and says, for example, that someone died. And knowing that they could call because of this, you constantly feel stress. What did I do? I understood that if this happens and I have a meeting or an appointment, I see that my mom is calling, and at that moment, I 100% enter a state of stress and stop being present at the meeting. Essentially, I ruin that moment. I'm not even talking about myself; I do bad things to other people. So I turned off all notifications on my phone. I started turning it off because I knew it was the only preventive measure where I could minimize the causes of stress. This caused new stress because you sit there and realize that your phone is off and maybe someone called you at that moment, and you didn't hear it.
But at least it triggered the process where I started being in a zone of awareness of what was happening and significantly processed it over the years.
Did it go away completely? No. I still feel some fear or stress with certain messages or calls. But really, I’m the one generating it, not other people. A person has the right to message or call me. Actually, a person even has the right to say, "I have a problem."
The question is: how do you react to this problem?
Can you, when someone tells you something like this, react calmly and understand that the problem they have may not actually be a problem that requires entering a state of stress? Maybe it's just a minor situation. This is usually common among those who generate problems for others, like at work.
A Simple Action Against Stress
And we come to the most important quality and rule that will help you deal with your own stress. The unique, incredibly important action that everyone should take to work with their own stress.
This rule is to manage your stress, to see the causes that arise, and change them. To be able to work with those states when you’re already in a state of problem or trauma, first start noticing how you treat other people and whether you are creating stress, anxiety, and difficulties for others. Moreover, do it consciously.
Because we generate a lot of problems in our lives, and you do too. You consciously create problems and stress for others, putting them in that state because, for you, it’s the very solution to working with your own created stress. But this is a lie, an illusion. The more we pay attention to others, the more we will pay attention to our own behavior towards others.
Like with that plane flying by. Understand that the operator isn’t to blame for the plane flying in the air. Don’t yell at the operator or producer, or others, for the noisy plane. They aren’t to blame. No one is to blame if it rains right now.
Don’t try to put others into stress.
Because the easiest thing we know how to do in our lives is to create problems for others. Once we learn this – we need to pay attention to it (this very simple action – constantly observe), am I creating stress and difficulties for others? Or in those moments when I do, reflect and see how I could have acted differently.
And at least learn to apologize. Honestly apologize and say, "Alex, I'm sorry, it’s my fault," "I shouldn’t have yelled. Masha, I'm sorry, it's my fault. I shouldn’t have done this. It’s my fault."
This will help minimize your own stress and learn to deal with it. This will allow you to live a harmonious, strong, and whole life. This will allow you to live in a state of freedom – because that’s what freedom is about.
Freedom doesn’t mean you’ve taken 20 people into slavery, that you have power over others, and the right to put them into a state of stress.
True freedom is when you’ve let everyone else go, and they don’t depend on you. True freedom is when you don’t project your own expectations onto others. And this will lead to your own internal freedom. This is a very strong point of personal development.