When I first drew this chart (below) for a class, we were talking about anxiety. But I think words like worry and stress are equally applicable, so for you business-types, I’ll use the word stress. Something I’m sure you can all (unfortunately) relate to. When something causes you stress, more often than not, you won’t like that thing. And you’ll want to change that thing. The boss stresses you out. So you find a new job. Or avoid the boss. The workload stresses you out. Come in earlier and stay later. Or call in sick. Calling in sick stresses you out. Your jerk coworkers stress you out. Too many emails. Too many useless meetings. Not enough pens. My chair’s uncomfortable. Security won’t let me bring this gas canister into the office. You get the point.
Problem is, even if you take the time and effort to fix each and every one of those things, there’ll be others to replace them. Luckily they all have one thing in common: the feeling of stress.
I’d intro the chart, but it’s right there, so I assume you already snuck a peek. Anyway, chart:
People tell me stories all the time of why they’re anxious or stressed. That’s fine, they’re usually good stories, as long as you know they’re just stories. Because when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter why you feel that way, what matters is that you become okay with feeling that way.
Forget trying to fix the hundreds of… thousa… millions of things that trigger the feeling of stress or worry or anxiety, and realize it’s the feeling itself that you have a problem with.
Am I gonna tell you how to fix that and be cool with your feelings? Yeah, probably. But not in this post. This one is just about the chart, and the idea that it may seem like you have a bazigillion problems and things that stress you out, but hopefully you can take some comfort in the knowledge that you really only have one.