National Stress Awareness Day: Respond, don’t React

Stress! We all experience it and, actually, we all need stress in our lives, it’s the degree of stress that’s important. Too much is bad for our health, but aiming to have no stress in our lives is stressful in itself because a totally stress free life isn’t actually possible.

Life throws curved balls at us constantly and every event in our lives requires action that may be stressful, that’s fine, but what we don’t want to do is make a stressful situation even more stressful by trying to avoid it.

‘Action Conquers Fear’ is one of the mantra’s I brought my children up with along with ‘Feel the Fear and do it Anyway’. Why? Because the sooner you face up to a challenge, the sooner it’s sorted and you can move on. But it’s not always easy.

Fear can paralyse us, I know, I’ve been there! The Paradox here is that the actual reality of the outcome is usually nowhere near as bad as the scenario we’ve built up in our heads. Like mothers who haven’t heard from their adult children when they expected to, and I’m guilty of this, in my head their car is upside down in a ditch somewhere and they’re dead! The reality is that they’ve got caught up in the excitement of the moment and forgotten to message me. We all have a tendency to assume the worst!

So, how do we control the stress in our lives, the answer is that we can’t always control the things that happen, what we can control is our response to those events, and the word ‘respond’ is the key here.

Bob Proctor says:-

Wise words, think about it, when we react to events without thinking first we lose control and our ‘chimp’ brain takes over, when we respond calmly we leave space in our minds to think clearly about the situation and take appropriate action. Reacting very often leads to chaos and the situation becomes even worse, is that what we really want?

Having seven children means there is never a dull moment and when my children share events that have happened to them that are not so good it would be very easy for me to become heated and angry. I work extremely hard never to do that and always stay calm, it’s a powerful skill that I’ve worked very hard on for years and it’s been worth it.

So often when I’ve delved into the situation it turns out to be no-where near as bad as I initially thought, imagine the excess stress I would experience if I exploded immediately? Deliberately staying calm and thinking clearly about the information I’ve just received allows me to ask questions, in terms of a stress reducing strategy, this is one of the most powerful ones I have.

So next time you hear something you don’t want to hear, stop, breathe and ask questions, you’ll ultimately feel a lot better and achieve a much better outcome. Trust me, it works!

Film – Netflix – Kingdom of Us

Ted Talk – Youtube – ‘Why my autistic children don’t need a cure’

Book – Amazon – Unravelled

Book – Audible – 9 Secrets to Thriving