Stress, tensions, depression, problems, these are common words and are very frequently used nowadays by every one of us in our routine life. But have we thought ever, what is stress? Road accident or severe disease or bomb blast … are these stress. NO. Stress is not an incident, situation or the object but one’s attitude and response towards these situations. Let’s take an example, sunny day in summer is curse for us in Pakistan but is considered as blessing in UK. This means that one’s attitude and response towards any incident make things good or worse for him/her. I strongly believe that unless you don’t allow, no situation or person could make bad things with you. God has given control in our hands; sometimes this control is on situation (when things are in our circle of influence), otherwise this control can be exercise on our response to that concerned situation. Situation of sunny day is the best example where hot weather could be in our circle of concern but not in the circle of influence. We can’t change the sunny day, however, how we respond to that weather, what we think and what we act like, it all is in our hands.
If we understand two facts; one that taking or handling stress is in our control and second that no one in this world lives without problems. The next question arises what leads to different problems in our lives. Some problems might be the result of natural disaster like the one we are facing now due to flood in Pakistan but there are many more which are created by ourselves. Gandhi said, “You can fulfill your need but you can’t fulfill your greed”. This is true; we have a long wish list in life which increases with the passage of time. Many times we disappoint when wishes are not fulfilled or we suffer due to our wrong decisions for the fulfillment of wishes. I would like to quote His Highness Aga Khan III, he said, “If your one fourth wishes in the life gets fulfilled you are lucky. Always look people who don’t have things that you have and thank God”. In this connection, I would like you to watch this video taken from Youtube and think that are we so deprive in life more than the person in the video. Shouldn’t we thank God to bless things which are so essential for life but we take them for granted. Reflect on these ideas which watching this video.
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When I watched this video of Nick Vojick, I realized that stress is not the issue, the real problem with us is stress management. I like to share my pattern of stress management with you which I am able to practice in many of my situations. This pattern consists of few action steps and few beliefs;
Step I: Analyzing the situation / issue: whether it is in my circle of influence (can I do something to change it) or circle of concern (I can’t do any thing to change it but it is bothering me).
Step 2: Control the situation, if it is in my circle of influence. For this, I jot down all possible ways and then try out each possibility based on the priority. But I believe that if all possibilities don’t work, there are other possibilities which will work, but I haven’t explored those yet. So I keep on thinking and trying.
Step 3: If the situation is not in my influence but only the concern, I try to adapt positive attitude towards it. Because if I would do otherwise, I will allow the situation to hurt me more.
Step 4: With all above steps, I always belief that I have one supreme authority who knows everything better than me and will do better for me. Trusting and praying to God gives me strength and feeling that I am not alone in this effort. God always supports in the positive decisions, decisions which are intended for betterment of everybody and are in accordance to natural ethics.
The above steps help me to cope up with the day to day issues I face in my life. Robert Schuler in his book “tough time never lasts but tough people do” gives many such examples where individuals overcome their crises and restarted their lives positively.
Considering the current situation in Pakistan where people face multiple problems including economic, security, social, financial, health etc. we need to educate people to manage stress successfully. Such soft skills should be the part of school curriculum and should be taught to the youth of country through variety of forums like youth clubs, schools, home etc. Nowadays people talk about revolution, I belief the first step is to bring change in oneself, in our attitude, thinking and approach towards problems. This can lead to collective effort as a nation to face the challenge positively and effectively for a better solution.
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