By Shane Rodgers
I am always astounded at the willingness of people to let others impose stress on them. The one thing nobody else can control is the way we feel inside our own heads. We are totally empowered to decide that nobody will get us down. Yet, we let them in. Why?
When you allow yourself to become upset or stressed by someone, by definition you are giving their behaviour credence, giving them access to your precious emotional centre and giving them some control of your life. Why?
Austrian neurologist Viktor Frankl famously survived the Nazi concentration camps by refusing to allow the Nazi’s to control his inner mind. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he offers one of the most profound lines ever written about the human condition: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Frankl also believed that pursuing success and happiness was fruitless. He contended that both could only be achieved as an “unintended side-effect” of a cause greater than oneself or as a by-product of surrendering ourselves fully to somebody else.
A study of 1200 elderly people, known as the Legacy Project, asked the research group to articulate their main regret. Far and away the main response was worrying. If people had their time over, they would spend less of it on empty concerns about things that almost never eventuated.
One of my favourite episodes of The West Wing includes a scene where President Bartlett laments that he wants to have more days where he feels better at the end of the day than the start of the day.
Ever since I first saw that episode some years ago, it has been my yardstick on whether I am doing the right job and spending my days doing the right thing.
Let’s face it, if our days drain us rather than energise us, we are almost certainly doing the wrong thing, and we have clearly not found the “one thing” that will enrich our lives.
This is easier said than done, but it is another common trait among those who claim to be content. Some fear is necessary to stop us doing really stupid things. But an incredible number of people live their lives constantly obsessed with what might go wrong, and constantly in a state of stress.
There is a famous social experiment in which a group of surfers are being trained on a beach that has rocks.
If the instructor constantly warns them not to surf towards the rocks, a large proportion of them end up on the rocks. If the rocks are never mentioned, most of the surfers just go safely to the beach.
Concentrating on things that can go wrong just increases the risk of that happening and creates artificial stress.
Seems obvious, right?
Shane Rodgers is the author of Worknado – Reimagining the way you work to live.
