About 9 years ago, I was almost made bankrupt because of a major business investment failure, and was left almost penniless, and do not even have a place for shelter. I was on the verge of suicidal thoughts, thinking at that point of time, it will be the end of the world for me. I was telling myself that there is no way out of the situations I am in, and to make matter worse, financial institutions aren’t your allies in times of financial needs, and was pushing for full settlement.
I was so stressed up that I went into a depression. Blessed am I, for at that time, I was moving into motivational speaking, henceforth I was telling myself, “This is not how I am going to end. This is not how Peter will end his life. This is not the kind of legacy I want to leave behind. I am the head and not the tail.” I rested for 2 days thinking nothing, for I cannot let my mind be troubled. What I needed then was clear thinking and not distorted negative thoughts. On the third day, I called up the banks negotiated out of the ‘pressing’ situations, and the next thing I do was to surrender 5 of my insurance policies out of the 9 policies I have bought over the years. I restarted my life with S$8,903.50, and the rest is history. Remember 3 days ago I was totally stressed and depressed, but when I learned to manage my stresses, it works in favor for me.
The point I am bringing up my past to you is not to talk about myself, but the importance of managing stress and worry.
Stress is not about events and experiences nearly so much as it is about a person’s perception of the circumstances that occur in his or her life. A person’s stress level has to do with what a person believes. Stress occurs when our perceptions of events do not meet our expectations and we do not manage our reaction to the disappointment.
Thus, what one person may consider stressful, another person may not find stressful at all. One person may take planning a dinner party for thirty people totally in stride, enjoying all aspects of the planning process as well as hosting the event itself. Another person may absolutely panic at the idea of giving an informal dinner party for six people.
The difference in whether the event is stressful or otherwise lies in the perception – it lies in what the individual believes to be the importance of the event, the potential consequences of the event, and the amount of effort associated with the event.
What you believe, what you perceive, determines how much stress you have, and the amount of stress determines how tired you feel at the end of the day. When it comes to stress, believing is key.
Definition of Stress
It is the interpretation and interplay of demands, constraints and supports that determines our stress response.
• A demand is made on us;
• Constraints that limit our capacity to meet the demand make it seem greater;
• Available supports help us to meet or manage the demand;
• The demands and the constraints create pressure;
• The effect on us is stress.
Each one of us will see the situation through our own eyes and it is our perception of the demands, and ability to meet them that will determine whether we are feeling ‘stressed’ or not. Stress, then, is a response to the perceived relationship between demands on us and our ability to cope.
Stress is neither positive nor negative. It is how we cope with it, react to it or live with it that determines its positive or negative effect.
Understanding how the pressures are generated and accumulate, alerting oneself to the signs of over- or under-stress and taking steps to keep yourself in the healthy stress area will enhance performance. Such an approach recognized that stress is a fact of life – and a positive tool for motivation and work quality.
Turning Your Worrying Spirals
When people worry, they are usually questioning – What if something goes wrong, or has already gone wrong and I can’t cope with it? If they keep asking themselves these questions without resolution, they become more and more anxious. For this reason, worry is usually considered to be the thinking component of anxiety. It is what you are saying to yourself when you are anxious, usually in anticipation of some future outcome or event.
Worry is your mind thinking ahead into the future to anticipate possible threats. Anxiety is how your body responds in anticipation of those future threats. Fear is the basic emotion you feel when your mind perceives immediate danger. The automatic physical response occurs during fear is often called the ‘fight-or-flight’ response because your body is gearing up to attack or to run from the threat. People who worry a lot express fears of failure, inadequacy, and incompetence, and it often lead to procrastination.
You cannot break old habits of reactions by simply not doing them anymore. Thus, you need to find new coping response. Each strategy will take a lot of practice, but with a little of persistence, most people are pleasantly surprised by how soon they start to turn their worry spirals around.
1) Put your worries in perspective – learn to treat your thoughts as guesses, interpretations, and predictions rather than facts that must be true. This allows you to examine them and look at a single situation in several different ways, thus, exercising choice in how you respond to your thoughts.
2) Face the things you fear – you need to learn how to face people, situations, and emotions that are linked to your worries. When people worry, they are usually thinking about the things they fear, but their mind spins around the issue as if they need protection from confronting it head-on.
3) Relax yourself – the body and mind are never really separate. Calming your mind and creating a subjective sense of peace and relaxation helps to bring down your worrying spirals, and to look at the whole issue objectively.
4) Stay in the present – the mind has the tendency to wander off into the future or traveling back to the past at the expense of the present. Instead of reacting to illusions that have not happened yet or to interpretations of the past, you can live in the present moment and fully experience all that life has to offer as it unfolds
Power of Positive Self-Analysis Thinking (PSAT)
Everyone thinks. It is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or prejudiced. Yet, the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence is thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.
Positive Self-Analysis Thinking (PSAT) is that mode of thinking – about any subject, content, or problem – in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them.
A PSAT thinker:
• Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
• Gathers and assesses relevant information, and effectively interprets it;
• Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;
• Thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
• Communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.
Most people are governed by their thoughts; as PSAT thinkers we learn to how to govern the thoughts that govern us. You have the capacity to control your thoughts.
Developing a Sense of Responsibility
All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame the person or the circumstance, it will not change you!
You have to take the position that you have always had the power to make it different, to get it right, and to produce the desired result. If something does not turn out as planned, you will ask yourself:
• How did I create that?
• What was I thinking?
• What were my beliefs?
• What did I say or not say?
• What did I do or not do to create that result?
• How did I get the other person to act that way?
• What do I need to do differently next time to get the result I want?
The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life (whether it is success or failure; wealth or poverty; health or illness; joy or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life.
If you do not like your outcomes, change your responses!
You have control over three elements of your life – the thoughts you think; the images you visualize; and the actions you take.
Though this principle is simple, it is not necessarily easy to implement. It requires concentrated awareness, dedicated discipline, and a willingness to experiment and take risks. You have to be willing to pay attention to what you are doing and to the results you are producing.
The fact is that it is not what life hands you but how you respond to it, mentally and physically, that matters most.
Your Favorite Author – Peter Ng
