Hey,
I was diagnosed with myopia when I was 18 years old. Myopia means nearsightedness or where you can see objects near to you clearly, but objects farther away are blurry. A vision condition can have different causes, but mine was particularly triggered by stress. Just three months earlier I had lost my father. My mother and I barely spoke and I had my final exams for secondary school.
I usually manage stress well. But in this situation, it was the most natural reaction due to two reasons:
I perceived the situation as threatening and out of my control
I did not have the skills to cope with the situation and what could help me navigate it.
These two reasons are the main causes for any event to become stressful for an individual.
According to the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress by Richard Lazarus and Judah Folkman, we experience stress when we perceive the outcome of an event as threatening and we do not know how we can cope with it. This is why not all similar events are equally stressful to all individuals.
When you encounter a stress-inducing event, your first filter should be to question if it is threatening to your goal. This alone will weed out many events because, in reality, we tend to label most situations as stressful. And the next filter is to determine if you have adequate coping mechanisms.
The lens of these filters in many events has helped me reduce stress in both my personal or professional life. Even in the face of life events like death, it is helpful as it gives you a framework on how you can reduce the stress and feel more in control of the situation.
Usually, the more time we spend worrying about events the more stress we will have over that situation. Instead, we should think of ways to take control of the event. As Jeff Bezos says,
“I find as soon as I identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first email message, or whatever it is that we’re going to do to start to address the situation – even if it’s not solved – the mere fact that we’re addressing it dramatically reduces any stress that might come from it.”
When I got my specs, my number was increasing every few months because I could not manage stress. But changing my perspective towards situations helped me reduce the stress and stop my spec number from increasing!
How do you feel about stressful situations? What is your way to cope with them? Reply and let me know!
See you next week,
Gayatri