The most tragic
thing about stress, without a doubt, is that so much of it is
self-created. We spend so much time thinking about potential
problems and penalties and punishments that we make ourselves miserable,
we walk around worrying about what may happen. Or we build up our
number of commitments so high that we never have time to unwind and
relax--we just run from place to place, job to job, commitment to
commitment, without ever being able to stop and look at all the wonderful
things that surround us; we're too focused on the tasks to come that we
don't see the present beauty.
Of course, there
is positive stress, but that's a balanced, conscious stress. Many
people put themselves in stressful situations in order to test themselves
or to learn about themselves. I joined the army for four years,
partly to test my own limits. But I always knew that the time would
end, and I knew I was there by choice. So even in basic training,
when stress levels are incredibly high, I knew that things weren't so
bad. I had chosen to be there, and the last day would come soon
enough. I chose to go to school and take the tests and write the
papers, and the stress was part of the package.
I learned a very
strong lesson about the power of stress in my first graduate program,
though. I constantly felt sick for the entire two years--my stomach
was constantly upset, my digestion was almost never what one would call
"normal," and these two situations led to a third--preoccupation
with the physical symptoms, which caused a great deal of additional stress
for me.
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This additional stress made the symptoms worse, so the
preoccupation grew stronger, which made the symptoms even worse. How
do I know that the problems were caused by stress? That's
simple: they were gone three days after I finished my last course,
and they've never returned.
Most people
don't realize the power of stress and the way it can affect our
bodies. Most of us think that the only symptom of stress is that
"stressed-out" feeling, the jitteriness and inability to focus
and concentrate. But stress is much more insidious than that:
it eats away at us, giving us headaches and diarrhea and dizziness and
making us want to sleep too much or not letting us sleep enough. And
once these symptoms start and we begin to fear a serious physiological
disorder, things get worse.
In my second
graduate program, my stress level was much higher, as I completed the
coursework for two master's degrees in two years. But by then, I had
learned much more about stress and how to deal with it. Part of that
was due to the four years in the army between the two programs, but part
of it was due to the fact that I actively tried to deal with the
stress. One of the most important ways that I dealt with it was
laughter--I watched Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs
regularly (even though I'm not much of a fan of television), and I read Calvin
and Hobbes all the time. I also went for long walks
regularly--I'd get up on a weekend morning and choose a place to have
breakfast that was a long way away simply to force myself to walk that
distance, and then walk home.
I was fortunate
enough to find out how stress affected me and to work on ways to deal with
it, but I'm surrounded by people who aren't able to do so. Part of
the problem is the amount of importance that they attach to almost
insignificant details. Couple that with the perfectionism that so
many people suffer from, and you see a huge problem. Things can
never be perfect, and if we spend our time trying to make them so, we're
dooming ourselves to failure. There comes a point at which we have
to let go of one thing and move on to the next, but many people cause
stress for themselves by making this process an agonizing one.
People who
procrastinate do this to themselves a lot, for trying to accomplish
everything before a deadline of tomorrow is much more stressful than
working on it bit by bit for several days. If we're working for
someone who criticizes a lot or who uses the threat of punishment or
demotion or firing as motivation, we're bound to be much more stressed
than others. If we have an instructor who focuses on trivialities in
order to determine a grade, we're also doomed to focus on those
trivialities and stress ourselves out, for we know in our hearts that
those trivialities aren't worth our time. I had an instructor like
that in one of my graduate programs. He focused on things like
keeping the verb "to be" out of our papers (we shouldn't write
"Romeo is one of Shakespeare's most popular tragic heroes," but
"Romeo stands out as one of Shakespeare's most popular tragic
heroes"), which to me is purely a matter of personal preference, and
he was trying to force his personal preference on all of his
students. Very early in the semester, I realized that the price I
would have to pay in re-writing all of my work to his standards wasn't
worth it, so I resigned myself to the "B" in his course and
focused more on the content of my work than the trivialities. It was
the only "B" I got in that particular program, but the way I
felt after accepting it was worth it. I would have spent that entire
semester stressing out over his trivialities, but instead I focused on
things that were much more important to me.
And you know, no
employer has ever asked me to justify the "B" in his
class. No employer has ever seen my transcripts--they just ask for
my degree. I saved myself three months of stress that I would have
undergone for no reason at all.
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