Pressure is a mental construct.
Please discuss. How does this play out in life?
I’ll start us out. The pressures of life affect us all. Financial strains, COVID uncertainty, family tensions, stress of a diminished social life—these are but a few of the burdens weighing on us. We each have our own individual flavor of difficulty and own own coping mechanisms.
The actual stressor itself is not what creates our tension. Our thoughts and emotional reactions to a challenge generate a biochemical cocktail in our body, causing us to feel stressed. Whatever our issue—say for instance, financial strain—we will need to find ways to hand the situation. If we agonize over the situation, we only create resistance and negativity that we need to overcome in addition to the problem itself. We make things harder on ourselves with stressful thought patterns.
Today’s message reminds me that I can work through my problems without punishing myself with stress, blaming myself for having problem in the first place. If I approach my challenges tactically rather than emotionally, it will enhance both my physical and mental health as well as my chances of success.
I don’t need to assign blame to myself or others for the hard parts of my life, I just need to decide what to do about them and take action. If I’m uncertain of my next steps, I can find experts to assist me. In these days of COVID upheaval, there is lots of assistance available, much of it for free. I can pray, meditate, take a brisk walk to alleviate my body’s biochemical stress reaction, identify a singe first action to take, and act on it. I can deal with anything better when I don’t additionally hamstring myself with pressure.
How about you? How do you pressure yourself and how do you alleviate that pressure?