Skip to main content

STRESS -- YAAH!!!

STRESS has become synonymous with living these days. From the time you are born to the time you take your last breath, stress will not leave your side. It becomes your staunch companion from the moment you begin to make sense of your environment.

STRESS is present in lesser or larger degrees in each human mind, but feeds particularly on the following factors:


  • INSECURITY
  • OVER-EXPECTATION
  • PERFORMANCE PRESSURE
  • ANXIETY 
  • FEAR OF FAILURE
  • INABILITY TO ACCEPT FAILURE

STRESS is a great equalizer. It doesn't distinguish between rich or poor, haves or have-nots (though it tilts more towards the haves), successful or not, clever or stupid (again the tilt towards the clever), businessman or athlete, politician or academician.

Neither does STRESS differentiate on the basis of age. A child of seven, appearing for periodic class tests, probably faces the same levels of stress that a corporate honcho faces during making crucial decisions. Fear of failure and performance anxiety do not spare anyone. And don't think it is related only to academic or professional areas. Homemakers, artists, musicians, voluntary workers, medicos, the man on the streets, the disc jockey, the hotelier....STRESS spares no one.

So how does one deal with it or keep it manageable?

Some useful things to keep in mind:
  • Take life as it comes, embracing the good with the bad. Not every situation will turn out in your favour, so learn to accept unfavourable outcomes
  • Keep expectations realistic. Sometimes we hope for and expect too much, ignoring the rational side of our brain, or paying no heed to hard facts
  • Limit your ambition. While aiming high is good occasionally, aiming for the stars every time you try is self defeating
  • Don't go overboard celebrating success or moaning about failure. Both are two sides of the same coin
  • Don't spread the disease. STRESS feeds on itself, so don't let it grow, and don't infect others with it 
  • Believe in destiny and GOD. Having a philosophical outlook helps you steer through difficult situations in life. Always remember that good and bad times alternate with each other, hope follows despair, darkness precedes light.
Give a good punch in the face to STRESS by meditating, positive thinking, and laughter. This TRIO can knock out stress and keep it in check.

ALL THE BEST!!  


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does Mother Mary Really Come? You bet!

Prolific writer-activist-thinker Arundhati Roy's memoir, an ode to her mother's formidable personality, is cleverly titled, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Below the title is a picture of young Roy nonchalantly smoking a bidi. Irreverence, thy name is Arundhati Roy! At 372 pages, it is a tome, a sweeping saga that recollects both her mother's remarkable life, as well as her own. Is it a Memoir? Yes and no. Though the book title refers to their mother-daughter relationship, the book - at several junctures treats each one of them as independent and exclusive from one another. In fact, for a good part, her mother finds no mention at all, and the reader is engrossed reading about Roy's exploits and struggles through Architecture College, early attempts to find her vocation and calling, her dabbling with cinema, acting, scriptwriting; her romantic liaisons with the luscious JC, Sanjay, Pradeep et al. A life as extraordinary and unapologetic as Arundhati's mesmerizes in itself. ...
1 comment
Read more

No Hopes for a Happy New Year

It's that time of the year again. When yearly round-ups are done diligently. Lists made, everyone sits down and assesses hits and misses. You tick off the "achieved goals" from your list. Make resolutions to fulfil the ones not yet surmounted. But I am doing something different. I am taking stock of my setbacks, my disappointments, the let-downs this year. I have absolutely zero expectations from the next year. Why? Because its useless to expect anything that I can't control. And since any chance of better days seems very unlikely, I am collecting the bits of my sanity to somehow trudge along the rest of my time on this planet. Why am I being such a kill-joy, you may ask? Well, not out of choice, certainly. What the world and my country, the air I breathe, the people I mix with, have become, all contribute to my rock-bottom expectations.  1. I am terrified, scared of what my country and its people have become. This wasn't the country I grew up in. It seems as if l...
2 comments
Read more

Emotional toil of festival times

Festivals are happy times, right? Time for merriment, revelry, celebration, enjoying yourself... Wrong! Studies show festivals call for a steady spike in stress levels. Cortisol shoots up, starting with preparation for festivals, and remains high throughout, in the quest to do everything perfectly, "at least during the festival". Guess who bears the brunt of this? Yes, its the one who takes emotional labour for everyone she cares for - the woman of the house. She wants everything to be perfect, so works her ass off tidying and cleaning things. Then she wants her family to be fed well, so spends hours toiling away making delicacies in the kitchen. Rangoli to be painted - there she is with the brush. Festoons to be hung up - she's balancing herself on a stool. Furniture rearranged, flowers put up, puja room decorated? Yes, only one person who signs up for all this. Then there's the stress of the whole family at home, stepping on each other's toes. She has to appease...
2 comments
Read more