Stressful circumstances are happening in our life every day. We have been talking a lot about changing the attitude in dealing with stressful circumstances in our life. But what is the significance of the circumstances? Should we even consider that? Listen to my experience or read my notes 🙂

Listen to this episode or you can subscribe to it in iTunes

Transcript: The Other Side of Stress – Dealing with Stressful Circumstances

Hi everybody,

This is Eugene Sukhorukov coming to you from Phoenix, AZ. I hope life is treating you well in your corner of the world. Thanks for joining me today! Welcome to my Healthy Positive Lifestyle Podcast!

As I promised last time, we continue talking about stress. In my previous episodes I was talking about where stress comes from, how to keep and restore the inner balance, I discussed some techniques I’ve used to keep me on track, and the last one was about what to do when meditation does not help to eliminate stress. You can find them on my site HealthyPositiveLifestyle.com

My last episode was released at the end of December last year, over two months ago. That shouldn’t have taken that long, but life is life. I think this perfectly alines with today’s topic, which is the other side of the stress equation. I can even speak to you from my own recent experience. Yes, changing the career, moving to another city and state, and completely re-planning and re-writing your life Path will indeed put certain pressure from the outside.
As I was saying in my previous episodes, stress has to have at least two opposite forces involved. According to Newton’s law, action equals reaction. That’s why we call it equation. And if one side of this equation equals to zero, the other side will be zero as well. We cannot really control the incoming force, but we can control our reaction, meaning our attitude. If we don’t resist, there will be no stress what so ever. Simple, right? Absolutely! I would love to close the topic of stress with that nice positive statement, but in real life simple does not necessarily mean easy. Now, ask me how I know that?

Working with stressful circumstances is very similar to working with martial arts. That’s why I use martial art approach in teaching stress management. We may think we are doing so good in controlled environment. We can shine in the dojo. But then real life happens, and we get knocked down, we get up from the ground thinking, geez, I didn’t see that coming. Yes, I’ve been there, that’s why I can share my thoughts. And trust me, I am not looking for such experiences. This is not something I am excited about… gotta have one of those to check it off my list. Ha.. No. But life is life.

So, today’s episode is about the other side of the stress equation, which is the circumstances, the environment, the incoming force, whatever we are reacting to, that produces stress.

Talking about circumstances is not that easy task as I thought it would be. It is not that much to talk about. Life happens whether we want it or not, rain falls in spite of our plans, day and night come and go with complete disrespect to our schedule. What else can we do? Anything I say will be about our action or about our reaction.

Today, I will not be talking about catastrophic events that turn people’s lives upside down. Although I could give you a couple of examples of how to survive and stay positive during and after disaster, from my own experience. Maybe one day I will, but not today. Instead, today I’d like to share my thoughts about life circumstances. And these are my thoughts, my experience, my observations. Let me tell you my story. You may not even relate to that. Definitely, I will not give you any specific advices, and I don’t want somebody to take my podcast as a replacement for professional help. I am not a shrink. Fair enough? Yes, this was a short annoying but necessary disclaimer. Now let’s roll.

The reason I want to talk about circumstances is that there are so many blogs, articles and videos all over the internet talking about attitude, about our reaction to life events, about personal transformation, about turning lemons into lemonade, about positive affirmations, self-talk, and things like that. I hear you! I am really with you on that, except that I don’t like lemonade. Otherwise, this is what I am studying, and this is what I am teaching to other people.
Then what’s the problem, you may ask? If you wanna be happy, just be!

Let me give you an analogy. Here’s a hypothetical scenario. Imagine a rain. I don’t think anybody will melt down from getting in a rain for a short while, like running to or from the car. Especially in Arizona where we live now. But what if the rain is cold and you get soaking wet? And it is late fall, 35 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and cold wind… I think everybody will have a different reaction, it depends on how strong the immune system is. What if we take a person who has been training his body, pouring a bucket of ice-cold water on himself every day. He is strong, he is tough like nails. There are people in Russia in Siberia who cut holes in the river ice in the winter, and they jump into ice cold water for fun. In Russia they are called “The walrus society”. How much cold can these people tolerate?
Can you put them out in a cold freezing windy rain and be sure they will be alright? And for how long? Can you put them out for an hour? A day? A week? I know this even sounds ridiculous. But seriously, at what point would they start breaking down if they don’t get time and place to hide from rain, dry up, get some rest, eat something, recharge their internal battery? Remember, even almighty Rembo needed some rest.

In my analogy, the rain represents circumstances, and our body reaction represents.. well, our emotional reaction to the circumstances. What I am trying to say is no matter how trained the person is, if circumstances keep coming in like an unstoppable rain, the person may get to the point of emotional or physical breakdown.
There are exceptions, no doubt about that. But I am not talking about somebody who reached the level when rain is not a rain until they think of it as a rain. I am talking about regular people, my friends, neighbors, colleagues. I am talking about somebody who comes to me with the question: how can I learn to deal with the stress under constant unstoppable rain of different circumstances? One thing I know for sure, developing a skill of surviving in a rain takes some time, and it is better be done in a safe zone at a good time.

Now I’m going to make a bold statement: you and I cannot avoid the influence of the environment on us. I don’t care how big and burly you are, if the stressful circumstances don’t go away you will eventually react to them. How? That will be different for every person. I’d love to say, just change your environment. It sounds very logical. But is it always practical? Can you always easily change your job? Can you easily increase your salary to pay your bills or medical expenses? What if the challenge is health issues in the family? Many of those issues cannot be easily eliminated, and they can keep coming. What options do people have then? Antidepressant medications? Alcohol? Drugs?

Unfortunately, I am not aware of easy ways I can make the rain lighter, shorter, warmer, or stop raining. Using the rain as my analogy today, this is what I can do, what I practice and what I teach to other people. Again, this is just my story.
#1 – Stop complaining about rain and admit that it is raining, accept the fact
#2 – Learn to respect the rain, identify and recognize potential dangers
#3 – Prepare the backup plan in case rain does cause problems
#4 – Learn how to use the rain to your advantage.

And I am not going to tell you to like something in life that you don’t. I am talking about finding something beneficial for you even in unpleasant circumstances. For example, I learned to like long commute, because it gives me time to listen to my educational CDs. Doing the job I did not like, I was learning to identify skills I could use in the future. And actually I did use them.

Finally #5 – Learn to deal with rain. We may try to stay out of it, build a shelter or use an umbrella. I will make a separate episode about this one.
Now, let’s say you find yourself in the middle of the rain of circumstances. Or maybe even a hurricane of events. Just life when everything happens at once. So, where do you start?

What I found that works for me, and again, this is just my experience, but for me the most important step is to stop. No, no, no, I don’t recommend to freeze. Just stop and look around. As my coach told me, stop running like a chicken with a head cut off. If I find myself in the middle of events when everything happens at once, my best strategy is first to figure out where I am. What am I up against? I need to face the reality and at least stop lying to myself. John Maxwell calls it the law of awareness.

What I’ve done myself in the past, and I saw other people doing that, was trying to motivate myself. Go, go Eugene. You can do it. You can make it through this! Just get your attitude up. And so on.

Stop it now. Take a deep breath. Assess the reality. This is what is called slow down to speed up. In order to move forward we need clear vision and good directions. I will talk about setting goals and identifying vision some other time.

I read an advice in the book about survival skills in the wild. It said if you got in a way of avalanche, you managed to survive and you found yourself covered by snow, the first reaction is to dig yourself out. It is natural. But don’t do it, yet, you may just waste your time and that little air you got. Take a second to check the reality. Chances are that after rolling in the snow for several long seconds, you may loose the sense of direction. Where is up and where is down? The advice was to let saliva run out of your mouth. Yep, just drool. This is how you can determine which way is up. Gravity does not change.

It works the same way in stressful hurricane. One of the big mistakes I’ve done, and I’ve seen other people do, is confusing positive mental attitude with ignorance and some degree of stupidity. Admitting the obvious problems is not being negative, it is just stating the facts. Our attitude may stink, but that’s a topic for another talk. Being negative is believing that those problems are the end of the road.

The next step I would take, is identify all major tasks in my life. Some people teach prioritizing those tasks. However, I found a different approach that works for me. I divide all those tasks into two categories: flexible and not flexible. Can they be easily moved around the schedule? I could not move things like classes at the dental school, my training with a teacher, and later my patients, or my students I was teaching at the same dental school I graduated from. That was my job. But I could move my own training, or going to the library, or reading books, or other things not set on the schedule. I learned English on my own during time gaps between classes and other activities. I also learned shorthand writing and many other things, also between other activities. I learned to find minutes of downtime and use them to my advantage.

Even though I do not always put priority numbers on my activities, I always evaluate them in terms of necessity and their meaning to my long term goals. Like putting large rock into the jar first, then small pebbles, then sand. I think most of us have heard this analogy at some point.
So, is everything I am doing so necessary for my goals? Can some of these tasks be placed on the back burner for a while? I learned that I can do almost anything that human can do, as long as I put enough effort into that, but I cannot do everything. I have to choose. Also, I know people say that you have to keep in mind your long term goals and do whatever benefits them. I know that. I totally agree. But if your long term goal is the Far away land, and your boat is sinking into the ocean, then you better switch your attention from your long term goals to the short term survival. Does it make any sense or is it just me? That goes to point number two I mentioned above. Taking a few moments to evaluate the circumstances help us to identify if there are some things that indeed must be taken care of right away. And also do we need to get some help to develop plan of actions.

I hear often people say, my kids have to go to this club, that club, dancing, football, soccer, baseball, wrestling, chess club, and ten others. My head is literally spinning. I am pulling my hair… Well, clubs are good, I guess, but are they all mandatory? Who is in control here? I know, I know, somebody will be throwing tomatoes at me right now. That’s fine, I expect that! But if you cannot stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. It is great to do so many things, but for me, I would choose to simplify my daly and weekly schedule if necessary, and remove some of the commitments. At least for a while, until everything gets back under control. Remember the sinking boat. I guess, the main point I am trying to make is that all mandatory commitments can be separated into “must be done” and “should be done” categories.
One of the best skills I’ve ever acquired, was the ability to say no. It is funny, when I say that I am Russian, and I never tried alcohol, some people don’t seem to believe me. In their mind, I gotta be drinking Vodka for sure. And I did have a lot of people around me while I was growing up, who were trying to convince me to celebrate something with them, which means drink alcohol. But every time I said no, and my no is no. Which part of NO do you not understand?

learning to say “NO” also helped me to disassociate from some people who were difficult, so to speak. You know, there are some people who drain our energy. It feels like they constantly need either to argue with somebody, or they want to express their pity on us, which lowers our self esteem. They need it like air. This is how they live. You may have such people in your life too, and they may be your relatives. Be aware of that.

Making frequent short stops while being in a high stress environment is essential for me. I am not talking about you. You may be an energizer bunny, or you just keep going like a little engine that could. But for me, it is important to make those stops, to take a deep breath each time, to reassess the circumstances, and to make sure I am going in a right direction. Again, we are talking about awareness. The heavier the storm is, the more important it is for me to take those short breaks.
I had so called Zen clock set up to give me a chime every 15 minutes. Now I am using an insight timer on my iPhone. I just stop and take a deep breath, and then keep going.

Sometimes I compare circumstances with untying the knot. Can you imagine a jumbled rope that has some complicated knots on it. If we try to simply pull the rope, we can make it even worse. I think everybody can agree with that. What I would need to do is to identify which end I need to loosen and pull out first, second and so on. Or if we are talking about circumstances, what can I solve first? And the biggest issue may not be the first one to go. Often we can be better off starting with the whole bunch of small issues. Once we eliminate them one by one, the bigger issue can be resolved much easier. Well, the main philosophy all this is based on, is to never stop. I’ve heard the statement, if you find yourself walking through hell, for goodness sake keep moving. We cannot ignore the circumstances. We cannot always cheer ourselves through the tough times. Positive attitude is not always joy and happiness. You may be mad, you may be angry, but you don’t stop and you know in your heart that no matter how it looks now, this too shall pass.

I will finish today with a parable to illustrate the attitude vs. stressful circumstances. Many of you may have heard this tale.
The story tells about two frogs. They we chasing flies around the farm, and by accident they got into a jar with milk. They were trying to jump out, but there was nothing they could push against to make a jump. And finally one frog gave up. He stopped swimming and drowned in the milk. But the second one never gave up. Remember, this too shall pass. I don’t know if that frog knew the statement, but who cares. He did good. He was swimming long enough to turn milk in the jar into butter. And that gave him the surface he needed to jump off and get out of the jar.

The milk in this story is stressful circumstances, and swimming is an attitude. We cannot ignore the circumstances, but we can often use it to our advantage. We can create the platform for the new chapter of our life to launch off. I know, I did it more than once in my life. More than twice. This is not the experience I can brag about, but this is what qualifies me to talk.

Alright, let’s say I assessed the circumstances, I acknowledged the issue, outlined the plan of actions and even decided to act upon my decision. Now, how can I walk in the rain? Well, sometimes I just have to bite the bullet. Sorry guys, there are some things in life that just don’t go away even if we close our eyes. But there’s a good news. We don’t have to solve the whole issue at once. Yep, you heard that right. In my next episode I will be talking about walking through the rain. Not a set of instructions, but my own experience and observations. And hopefully this can help somebody in a tough moment.

In a meantime, I hope to hear from you. Please send me your questions and comments. Share your story! This helps me to come up with topics useful for my listeners. You can contact me at HealthyPositiveLifestyle@gmail.com. You can find my page on the FaceBook as Healthy Positive Lifestyle Network 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 line 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!

---

You can subscribe to it in iTunes

Like us on FaceBook!

You can listen to the rest of my Holistic Life Story here 

If you like this page, then please help me to promote PEACE and HARMONY. By clicking “Like” button you will join me in spreading PEACE and HARMONY around you!

Make a wonderful day happen!
Peace!

Eugene