Coping With Stress

What Is Stress?

Ask twenty people and you might get twenty answers! (boot camp)

What is stressful to one person may be a delight or challenge to another.

While there are several meanings to the word stress, the one we stress the most refers to emotional or intellectual strain or tension. In most cases, we mean that we are overly strained or too tense. We define our happiness by the lack of stress or tension. The less stressed that we are the better we feel.

Two Types of Stress

Distress - this is the one we are the most familiar with. You cannot cope with the pressures of life around you and fear failure is eminent.

Eustress - This is the kind of stress you feel on your wedding day. There are schedules and other pressures, but in the middle of it all you are joyful. It is also the stress an athlete feels when he scores or crosses a finish line.

Both types of stress place tension on your body, mind, emotions and spirit. One is destructive and the other is constructive.

Check out www.stresstips.com and take their stress test to see how stressed you really are! Make sure you see the tombstone!

Let’s List

Distress Events Eustress Events

The First Step To Cope With Stress

Given the two kinds of stress, realize that you will NEVER be stress free!

My point is that the first step to coping with stress is to not be fixated with stress and imagine that it can be eliminated. To quote an ANE author, "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." Make that word trouble, stress, and you can see that it is an age old and universal issue. To wish for a life of sitting in a lounge chair under a Magnolia tree sipping a mint julep reading Faulkner every day is not only a fantasy but a source of stress since it cannot be achieved.

Minimize Distress and Maximize Eustress?

Some might say that we need just do away with all distress and PARTAY our way into a full life of eustress.

Actually, that would be more stressful. There is no way to totally eliminate either one.

Neither extreme is healthy.

Balance is the key!

Seek what is called the SAFE zone in the emotional stability program that I have facilitated.

Stable And Free Eternally

Stability may seem to be tough in our constantly changing world. Tough, yes, but not impossible.

Those who are always seeking eustress often end up with the following characteristics; prideful. condemning, arrogant, greedy, judgmental, etc.

This is the way they feel exhilarated or how they keep their exhilaration. By trying to ignore negative stress in their life they become negative themselves

Their high ride is a fantasy bubble and if it is popped they usually plummet into the pit of despair.

When they hit the bottom they suffer from the same traits as the people who see life as only one distress after another.

These people characteristically are usually fearful, depressed, bored, angry, bitter, frustrated, full of shame or embarrassment. They are easily hurt, bear the guilt of everything they do.

Many people are on a roller coaster ride between the two extremes. They need stability.

The SAFE program is a 17 week program that is repeated three times, so I cannot give you everything involved in the program. You can obtain a complete overview of the program by writing or calling

SAFE Ministries

3517 NE 9th Ave

Portland, OR 97212

(503) 284-8048

Those that are in the counseling career paths may find it helpful to them as a resource.

The Second Step for Coping With Stress

ASSESS YOURSELF

It has been said that we are our own worse enemies. Many distresses in our life are self imposed.

Often that is because we do not really know ourselves.

We have not looked at what makes us tick.

Knowing that will help us know what ticks us off or picks us up.

With that knowledge, we can better live our life and make wise choices that will give us less distress and more eustress.

What’s Your MAP?

Why are you in the career field you are now? Good pay? What I love? It’s a job?

Why are you in your course of study?

Your Dad is a ______? Big bucks ahead? You have always been fascinated with this discipline from childhood?

Unless what you are doing is in line with your ingrained MAP you will always be in distress or under stress. Short periods of eustress followed by long periods of distress prove that you are not following your MAP.

So what is a MAP anyway?

It is a Motivational Abilities Pattern. It is how you are wired from birth. When you are following your MAP you are at your happiest and most creative and fulfilled. When you do something else you are stressed and unfulfilled.

For further study, pick up Arthur F. Miller’s “Why You Can’t Be Anything You Want You Want To Be, published by Zondervan Press or email People Management International, LTD. At pmiintled@earthlink.net. Sorry, they gave no web page, but tell Lycos to go fetch the company name. C];-)}|>

Two Examples of Missing Your MAP.

Susie is a fairly successful legal assistant in a large law office. All day long she feels tired and overburdened. She is very organized, but still she feels unfulfilled and lacks a sense of accomplishment even after several raises.

On the weekend, Susie composes music and paints. Her scores are very detailed and wonderfully arranged. Her paintings are like high quality photographs showing tremendous detail.

Her skills can be used in both work and play, but her MAP is more inclined to creativity and finished products with her name on it.

At the office, she does all the work and when the brief is put together the lawyer puts his name on it and he gets all the glory as a wonderful lawyer. Some of the lawyers that she does work for do not even know her name or acknowledge her work.

For Susie to fully activate her MAP potential and receive the satisfaction that would give, she needs to at least work in a music or art career field and maybe even own a music store. She has the skills for the business end and she could display her own work and have more energy to have her music published from her painting sales.

Bob, on the other hand has received a promotion to shift supervisor at his plant. Bob has been with the plant 25 years and has always been the outstanding producer and troubleshooter.

The President of the company personally ordered Bob’s promotion. He felt he was doing the right thing for Bob and the company.

Unfortunately, Bob has started to miss work and complains of stomach problems. His temperament has changed and he is having troubles at home. He never finished his reports on time and is always somewhere on the assembly line instead of at his desk when he should be there. He may be fired soon.

What has happened to Bob?

The company has happened to Bob. In the Federal Government, we refer to this as promoting a person to their level of incompetence. We tend to blame the person when it is actually the system.

Bob was great at details, a team player and had a keen eye and sharp mind for production issues. However, he was not a supervisor. He was a supporter of the supervisor, but he had no leadership skills and paperwork bored him. His grammar was not that wonderful and he was computer illiterate and all his reports were on the computer.

The failure was on both sides here. Bob had bought into the lie that you can be anything you want to be. After all, this is America!! He had never assessed himself because on the line he could just be himself without having to know why. The natural course of events is to work hard and get promoted, so why would he refuse? If he knew himself and his MAP, he would have done so.

If the plant supervisors that knew Bob well enough would have spoke up and said they felt that the companies interest would be better served by just giving Bob a raise the company would not have lost a valuable employee and Bob would not be on the verge of a divorce and a nervous breakdown.

So, assess yourself. What makes you tick? What is your real passion? Are you pursuing it? Or are you going to be like 85% of the American workforce that are miserable in their current career fields, but are stuck due to pensions, perks, and salaries?

Are you really doing what you want to be doing or are you living out the dreams of your father, mother or some role model? While they had dreams for you, you might have real nightmares.

To cope with stress, learn your MAP and avoid unnecessary stress so that you will have the emotional and mental energy for normal stress!

The third step to cope with stress is now to assess your stress. Now that you know that some stress is inevitable and to seek a stress free life is unhealthy and you know your MAP or what makes you tick you can start listing all the stress issues in your life.

Take a couple of minutes and list four things that you believe are stressing you out!

1.

2.

3.

4.

Now if you put taking tests on the list, scratch it off and make a note. Less Internet chat and dating and more studying and tests will be less stressing. Life is a test and by putting that on the list you are still looking for the fantasy land to escape responsibility for your problems.

If some bells went off when we spoke of MAPs, do you see some of these things as contrary to the way you are wired or motivated? If so, then look for ways to replace those things with things that fit your MAP. If your major is your MAP and they threw in a course that is bonkers you may just have to bite the bullet for a semester.

Class time only allowed for a list of four causes of stress and I would gather that you have a few more than that so make a full list when you get back to the dorm before the parties and the hazings start.

Once you have gone through your assessment of your problems tossing out the fantasy of a stress free life and have made some decisions about the ones you realize are caused by being out of your MAP you can go on to dealing with the rest of the stresses or problems in your life.

The fourth and for our purposes the final step to cope with our stress problems is to

SIFT

Single out the real problems!

Isolate the problems which are the most urgent!

Find _____ absolute best solution!

Take action as soon as a wise decision is made!