Stress kills, redux: the best short piece I’ve read about stress.
The other day I posted a long summa about stress and the bad things it does to us. This morning I read a great short piece from John Murrell of Good Morning Silicon Valley on the subject of stress and how we react to it:
Stressors are inevitable; stress isn’t
I won’t summarize it for you, because I think you should take three minutes to read the whole thing, then as long as you need to ponder its ramifications for your own life.
What I will do is quote John’s conclusion for shorthand, and as a reminder to myself:
It comes down to acceptance — acceptance that you are largely powerless in this world, and that’s OK; acceptance that the outside world will continue to turn without your constant attention; acceptance that you can’t change the wind but you can adjust the sails.
While I’m at it, I’ll tell you that I’ve been reading Good Morning Silicon Valley longer than any other blog or newsletter. If I had to cut my RSS feeds down to ten, GMSV would make that list easily.
Do yourself a favor and read Murrell’s piece on stress. If you care about what goes on in the high-tech world, do yourself another favor by adding GMSV to your regular online rounds.
~
(Photo of some serious de-stressing by -just-jen-.)
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From our good friend Epictetus
5. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. (1)
a. True instruction is this: —to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole. (26)
b. With every accident, ask yourself what abilities you have for making a proper use of it. If you see an attractive person, you will find that self-restraint is the ability you have against your desire. If you are in pain, you will find fortitude. If you hear unpleasant language, you will find patience. And thus habituated, the appearances of things will not hurry you away along with them. (10)
c. It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else were happiness also impossible.
i. We should act as we do in seafaring: “What can I do?â€â€”Choose the master, the crew, the day, the opportunity. Then comes a sudden storm. What matters it to me? my part has been fully done. The matter is in the hands of another—the Master of the ship. The ship is foundering. What then have I to do? I do the only thing that remains to me—to be drowned without fear, without a cry, without upbraiding God, but knowing that what has been born must likewise perish. For I am not Eternity, but a human being—a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day. I must come like the hour, and like the hour must pass! (186)