Have you ever noticed that we call it stress management?
We don't call it stress elimination.
Why?
Because it's not going away.
We live in a stressful world.
There are stressful things that happen.
And believe it or not,
Not all stress is bad.
Think about it.
If we didn't have stress like deadlines,
Nothing would ever get done.
There's great stress,
But the stress we're going to talk about here for the next few minutes is the stress that doesn't really help you.
It doesn't serve you.
But we call it stress management,
Not stress elimination.
It's not about completely distressing to the point of not having stress.
It's about when stressful things happen,
Whether they're people,
Their situations,
Their environments,
How do you manage them in the moment?
Because when you can manage something in your own head,
In that six inches between your ears,
You are in a powerful,
Powerful place.
So how do you do that?
The key here with stress management is to know one thing.
You create most of it.
That's right.
I said you create most of your own stress.
Stress typically isn't caused by what's happening or what's coming at you.
Most of our stress is created by how we choose to respond or react to what's coming at us.
That really speaks to one foundational piece of stress,
Which is when we feel more in control,
We don't feel stressed.
We often feel more confident and capable.
But when we feel out of control,
That's when the anxiety starts to head in,
Starts to come in and we start to feel a lot more stressed.
So it's really about control.
Now let's talk about that idea of control for a minute.
There are two things you need to know about control.
That's it.
One,
Two.
That's it.
One,
There are things in your world over which you have zero control.
And two,
There are things in your world over which you have virtually total control.
So let's start over here first.
What are some of those things over which you have zero control?
We could list hundreds,
But the things that often come up are things like the weather,
The traffic,
The stock market,
Other people are at the top of my list some days.
All of those things we can't control,
Interestingly enough,
Are things that we spend a great deal of our time and energy focusing on.
However,
It's a much shorter list over here.
What do we have virtually total control over?
Us.
Ourselves.
That's it.
Zero.
99%.
That's a huge difference,
But we often spend most of our focus throughout any given day over here.
Think about this.
The weather is an easy one,
For an example here.
If you're listening to a weather forecast,
And the weathercaster,
The meteorologist says there's a 20% chance of rain tomorrow.
What instantly do you think?
Oh,
It's going to rain.
We never have a moment where we say,
Hmm,
That means there's an 80% chance of sun tomorrow.
Those are exactly the same things,
But we're almost conditioned in our culture,
In our society,
To find what's going to go wrong.
What's going to go wrong instead of looking for what's going right?
And to boot,
Isn't it interesting how whether it rains or not tomorrow,
What bearing does that have on your life?
Unless you were planning a wedding outside with 700 people attending,
Chances are the drizzle that may or may not happen isn't something you need to think about.
Throw an umbrella in your bag and move on with your day.
But we spend so much time thinking about things that have no bearing.
If you're walking through your life day to day expecting it to rain or thinking it might rain,
You're missing a ton of sunshine that's there all the time.
So it's a shift in perspective,
Though things you're thinking in your head are often creating your stress.
Now again,
I would never say we create 100% of our stress,
But if you think about it,
I bet every one of you would agree you probably create 50%,
60%,
70% of your own stress.
Chances are you're creating a lot more than you think.
The beauty of that is what?
Who has control over shifting that?
You do.
It's the only thing you do have control over.
So start shifting your thinking.
Everything you hear that begins to get that stress going,
Take a moment and look at the other side.
Flip it.
What is the other side of it?
I guarantee you'll find something that you never would have given yourself a chance to see,
And the thing that you never would have given yourself a chance to see is going to serve you a lot better than the thing that you're autopilot seeing every time it happens.
So the next time the weather forecaster says it's going to be partly cloudy today,
Take a moment and realize partly sunny is what's in the forecast.
