Where stress comes from?
Today I will continue talking about stress. This seems to be one of the most popular topics. I wonder why. People often ask me, Eugene, how do you deal with stress? Well, I have life happen to me like most of people I know. What do you expect? I am just a human, and I am not perfect. That’s why I am making several episodes about stress. I am not talking to you as a mentor, but rather as a person who has been on both sides of the fence. I am NOT planning to give you any psychological advice, nor will I try to diagnose or treat any medical conditions. I am just sharing with you what I have done, and what worked for me. And I have not arrived yet. This is lifetime journey.

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In my previous episodes I was talking about how to find your Center, or your inner balance, and also how to keep it and how to re-gain it if necessary, because balance is not a destination, it is a process. Today I wanna share with you my perspective on stress, what it is and where it comes from. It may not be your perspective, and I am fine with that.
But before I proceed, let me tell you the ancient Greek tale.

One day, Xanthus was at the party with several students of philosophy, who were his companions, and he became quite intoxicated. While in that state one of them, trying to make fun of him, said, “Xanthus, I have read somewhere that it is possible for a man to drink up the Sea. Do you believe it could be done?”

“Yes, easily,” said Xanthus. “I’ll wager you my house and lands, and all that I have, that I can do it myself.” The wager was laid, and to confirm it they exchanged their rings.

The next day Xanthus, missing his ring and finding a strange one in its place, asked his slave Aesop for an explanation. “Yesterday,” replied Aesop, “you got drunk and bet your whole fortune that you would drink up the sea; and to bind the wager you exchanged your ring.”

Xanthus realized what he had done, and begged Aesop to tell him what to do.

“Well”, Aesop replied, “you know it is impossible to do what you promised, but I will show you how to evade it.”

So, they met the scholar at the time specified, and went with him and a great number of people to the sea-shore, where Aesop had provided a table with several large glasses upon it, and men who stood around with ladles to fill those glasses. Xanthus, instructed by Aesop, took his seat at the table. People looked at him with astonishment, thinking that he must surely have lost his senses.
“My agreement,” Xanthus said, turning to the scholar, “is to drink up the Sea. I said nothing about the Rivers and Streams that are everywhere flowing into it. Stop those, and I will proceed with my engagement.”

Well, this is a cool story. I read it when I was a kid. I don’t know if Xanthus would be able to drink the Sea, I would not recommend drinking too much salty water to begin with. But that’s not the point. While you can learn several things from the story, the point I wanna make is that no matter how big the problem looks, you can solve it step by step as long as you stop feeding the problem.

Since we are taking about stress and where it comes from, lets figure out what stress really is. To illustrate my point, I will take a definition of mechanical stress from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

The definition of Stress is: a force exerted when one body or body part presses on, pulls on, pushes against, or tends to compress or twist another body or body part.

In simple words, stress happens when two opposite forces meet. According to the law described by Isaac Newton, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That means whenever an object pushes another object it gets pushed back in the opposite direction equally hard.

Yes, whenever we are standing, sitting or lying in the bed, we are applying pressure to the surface we are on. And that surface pushes us back. We are under the stress all the time.

Somebody may say, come on Eugene, I don’t feel any stress on my bed. It is very comfy! Yes, I agree. But how about this: find the most comfortable bed, lie down and stay still for couple of hours. Don’t move at all. And don’t fall asleep, because if you do you body will move while you are asleep. I promise! This happens because our body automatically adjusts to relieve the pressure and to normalize blood circulation.

We live under the pressure all the time. Do you know that the air pressure against our body is about 14.7 pounds per square inch? Yes, the atmosphere, the air we breathe, is pushing us with over 2,000 pounds per square foot. And we are OK with that.

Stress itself is not a bad thing. All our physical existence is based on interaction of opposite forces. We study Physics and the Laws of Nature, we respect them, and we definitely take them into consideration in whatever we do. We don’t make those laws, but we have to live by them. It makes no difference whether we like them or not. We may not like gravity, but I doubt somebody will try to prove it wrong. We just have to learn to use it to our advantage.

Forces of Nature may become destructive if they exceed limits of our physical strength, or even if they are not that strong, but are continuous, lasting for a long time. But remember what I said before: whether it is physiological or destructive, stress requires two opposite forces. What happens if you remove one force? Well. let’s try. Clap your hands right now in front of your chest. Can you? Got it? Now try to clap with one hand only. That’s exactly what will happen if you remove the opposite force. But be careful! If you try to make a strong clap in the air with just one hand, your arm may get tense. Since there’s no resistance from the opposite hand, our body create the resistance inside.

The reason I am telling you all this is that emotional stress works basically the same way as a punch or a kick in martial arts: there’s an outside force coming towards us, and there’s a resistance we put against that force. If we get punched, the effect may be minimal to none, or it may be a bruise, or it may be a bone fracture. All depends on the force applied. However, if the resistance is zero, the force applied will be zero as well, no matter how strong the punch was intended to be.

Emotional stress happens as a result of collision of external forces and internal resistance. Or even worse! Our mind can create imaginary forces, and then start fighting with those like they are real. Majority of people I have met in my life have some kind of preconceived idea of how things should go. They set plans and expect things go a certain way. And if they don’t, many people get out of balance, just like in martial arts. And I am not an exception. I remember my teacher told me:

“Try to live 5 minutes a day without judging anybody or expressing your opinion about anything”
“That’s really hard”, I said.
“You see: you didn’t last even 5 seconds”

Now let me make a bold statement about where stress comes from:
our emotional stress is a self-inflicted condition caused by our reaction to real or imaginary circumstances.

Let me repeat that:
our emotional stress is a
self-inflicted condition – it means we create it for ourselves…
caused by our reaction to real or imaginary circumstances.

I don’t wanna sound insensitive. Circumstances may be quite significant and overwhelming. Nevertheless, remember what I said earlier: no matter how hard the punch is, if there’s no resistance, there’s no damage. Same with the stress: it doesn’t matter what happens to us, but it matters what happens in us, meaning our attitude towards what happened.

Yes, I know, somebody’s thinking now, “Eugene, that it’s easy for you to say, you don’t know what I am going through”. You’re right, I don’t. But like I said before, I am not an exception, I am not a super human. And I’ve been hit by life more than once. And more than once I got way out of balance, I got knocked down, so I had to pick myself up, dust myself off, regain the balance, keep moving and repeat the cycle again when necessary. So I believe I’ve earned the right to make such an – quote- “EASY statement” about stress and attitude.

So, what people are stressing about? If you ask number of people this question, you may get quite a wide range of responses.

To name a few: children, work, finances, family, new home, new job, loss of job, moving in general, illness, disability, criticism from other people, coworkers, not enough work, too much work, feeling too much responsibility, fear of uncertainty, long commute, traffic on the freeway, weather’s too hot or too cold, rain, snow, and so on.

Two months ago we moved to Phoenix, AZ from San Diego, CA. First question people ask me is “WHY Phoenix from San Diego?” meaning “are you crazy?” Well, it isn’t the place that graces the man, but man the place.

Yes, Phoenix is HOT in the summer compared to San Diego. And yes, I love San Diego. But due to some circumstances we chose to move to Arizona, at least for a while, and I don’t find the weather or the desert to be the reasons to stress out. But I know quite a few people that do.

Somebody may ask, is there such a thing as a valid reason to stress out? And if there is, then how to determine which one? I am not talking about physical stressors such as poor diet, dehydration, fatigue, lack of sleep, overheating etc. Those may be outside of our control. However, physical condition may or may not result in psychological stress, and that entirely depends on our attitude.

To answer the question above, validity of the stress is in the eye of the beholder. For example, we may feel devastated after getting a flat tire. I agree, that is not a pleasant experience. But I remember reading about Thomas Edison. When he was 67, his factory burned in a fire, and he lost most of his work he spent his life developing. I can imagine that in 1914 two million dollars was a lot of money. And he only had $200,000 insurance. Nevertheless, on the very next morning he said, “There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.”

As I mentioned before, stress itself is not a bad thing. It was given to us as an amazing survival mechanism. I read stories about somebody jumping over 30 feet pit running from the lion, or about a woman lifting loaded pickup truck to save her baby. Acute stress, which is short in duration, helps us to activate additional resources, come up with solutions or ideas.

However, chronic stress, which is going for prolonged period of time, presents quite a danger to people who have it. This can be our reaction to unpleasant circumstances, or it can be reaction to imaginary circumstances. Speaking of bad circumstances, how bad the bad really is? Like my teacher said, what’s wrong with the present moment if we don’t think about it?

Now remember clapping exercise I suggested in the beginning? If you make a strong clap movement with one hand only, pretending the second hand is there, you may notice that your arm, biceps and triceps, get a little bit of tension. You will feel like you are flexing your arm for a second. If the opposing force is not there, we often have a tendency to create the opposing force inside, and that gives us some feeling of accomplishment.

There’s a bi-directional connection between emotions and physical condition of our body. Just look at people going through some emotions: they may clench their fists and teeth, roll their eyes, make faces.. Some things are so obvious that they were described as body language. Some reactions are obvious but not that noticeable from outside, like discomfort in the legs, shaking knees, pressure around neck and shoulders, perhaps discomfort in the stomach area. And of course there are a lot of minor reactions inside our body that reflect every thought and emotion we have. People who constantly keep some emotional resistance, not only eventually develop fatigue, chronic pains etc., but also suffer from various internal disorders caused by stress.

Again, I will not attempt to make any medical suggestions. Please see the doctor if you have any specific health related questions.

As I mentioned, this physical-emotional connection is bi-directional. It means what goes one way, can go another way. We cannot always meditate ourselves into calmness. But we can physically affect the area which is getting tense from the stress, and by relieving tension we can relieve emotional tension associated with that area. That’s why common activities to reduce stress include breathing, exercises, massage, dancing, games and other fun physical activities. People get the mental focus off the problem, and they relieve and redistribute the physical tension inside the body. In my future episodes, I will be talking in greater details about each exercise  and various technique I’ve done.

People often ask me about how to get rid of the stress in their lives. I will make just a couple of points today, to stay within the topic of this episode.

The very first advice I give people, you cannot fight your way out of stress. This will be like trying to stop the war with another war. It will only lead to more destruction. Yes, the very effort to eliminate the stress in life can be one of the biggest stress producers! As well as blaming ourselves for stressing out or inability to get rid of stress. I’ve seen it before a lot in other people. And yes I experienced that too.

Then where and how should you start? That is very hard to say without knowing where you are. I can only tell you what I did for myself. Not that I was going through much stress when I started being 14 y.o., but I had to identify some flaws in my own emotional balance as I was going through life. So I’ve done myself what I am talking about in my podcast. I’ve used it more than I want to admit.

Good starting point for me was the book Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. As the first step I began to learn not to complain about weather. Ever. That was one thing I knew I had no control over what so ever. I was learning not to worry about things I could not control in life, things that would happen no matter whether I worried or not. Much later I read a famous prayer, that says:

God, give me serenity to accept things I cannot change,
The courage to change what I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I like it. This really resonates with what I believe in.

By the way, when I say I changed something in me, or I started believing something, or stop worrying about weather, and things like that, every such statement reflects 3-4-5 years of my life I spent working on myself, and some of those projects are still work in progress. Was it worth it? In my opinion it was.

There’s a famous Indian tale which I think relates to thes topic today.

One evening an old Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other one is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’
The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

How does it relate to the stress topic? People feed their own stress. I’ve learned along the way that we speak our life into existence. There’s an old Russian saying, “Tell the person 100 times he is a pig, and he will oink”. When I was a kid I did not really understand the power behind this funny folk saying. The book that opened my eyes and tremendously helped me was the one by Dr. Shad Helmstetter “What to say when you talk to yourself”. I am not gonna discuss it much right now, there will be a separate episode about self talk. But to summarize it, we have the complete power to bring stress or relief, misery or success in our own life by changing the way we talk. The power of a spoken word is incredible!

I started today with the ancient Greek story about Aesop. There was another story. One day Xanthus had a guest, and he asked his slave Aesop to cook the best thing in the World to impress the guest. Aesop brought cooked tongue. Giving it to the master, he described that all wonderful things in the world were created with the help of the tongue.

Xanthus looked at the tongue and said, ‘if this is the best thing in the World, then what is the worst?’ He asked Aesop to bring that worst thing to him. He wanted to impress a guest and check how smart his slave was. Aesop simply walked around and brought him a tongue again. He said that all bad things in the world happen because of the tongue.

So, back to our today’s topic: where does the stress come from? The physical force comes from outside. It always has, always will. There’s not much we can do about those forces, other than step aside, redirect, redistribute or relax. However, the emotional stress, which is our reaction to the circumstances, comes from inside. And this reaction is totally up to us. Not only it creates all side effects of the stress, it also drains our resources and even blocks our creativity and ability to overcome the obstacle. We get tense, and we become more vulnerable to the strikes from outside.

There’s enormous number of circumstances that happen in our life every day, every moment. I cannot stop them for as long as I live. I will try to change the environment I am in if I can. However, it is 100% up to me to choose which circumstances to react to. It didn’t happen to me overnight. I did not wake up one morning saved from all worries, completely indifferent to everything around me. That would probably be considered as a mental disorder. But what I started doing was eliminating those streams of worry one by one. I started with the most obvious ones, like weather issue I mentioned earlier, and continued as I was reading books, listening to my coaches and teachers. Some of those worries I eliminated completely, and some of them I replaced with creative thinking. No, I have not arrived yet. Besides, just between me and you, there are some things I doubt I will ever stop getting emotional about. But all can I say is
God, give me serenity to accept things I cannot change,

The courage and knowledge to change what I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

I see so many people who may not know how to change their life, but they are so unhappy about it. One thing I can suggest, which I learned from different teachers, if you find yourself in hell, for goodness sake, keep moving. Don’t just camp there, move. Change what you can. And if you don’t know where or how, find a coach, a mentor, a teacher, or maybe even a shrink who can give you directions. Do you know how many shrinks it takes to change the light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

That was funny by the way, you can smile now. But seriously, remember, if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten. If you don’t like where you are, change. You and you only have 100% control over your emotions and your attitude.

In my future episodes I will be talking about various techniques I learned and I personally used and taught to other people. Not everything works for everybody, I will be upfront with you. But I already made a disclaimer, I am not a shrink. I am simply sharing with you what I’ve done to get from where I was to where I am, and what I am currently doing to get from where I am to where I am going. So stick around.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you. Share with me what is or what was stressing you out in your life, and what did you do to get out of it. Or maybe you are looking for some guidance. Like I said I don’t give any medical advices, but I can share my own experience or my perspective. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at

HealthyPositiveLifestyle@gmail.com. You can find me on the FaceBook as Healthy Positive Lifestyle or you can follow me on Twitter @HPLPodcast

If you found something useful in my podcast, or if you have suggestions how I can improve, please drop me a liner too. I would really like to know.

Don’t forget to visit my site HealthyPositiveLifestyle.com
You can also find a transcript of this episode on my site. Hope to hear from you soon!
Until then,
Smile, stay happy, keep the balance and make a wonderful day happen!
This was Eugene from Phoenix AZ. Talk to you next time!

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Peace!

Eugene