How You Create Stress For Yourself

If you’re human, you’ve experienced stress at some point in your life. Heck, you might be experiencing it right now. 

Stress is real and it can be overwhelming. It can impact your relationships, your career, and your health. It can take the joy out of a celebration, an accomplishment, or an upcoming holiday. 

Stress can make everything seem harder and therefore have a profound effect on your life.

Below, I’ll cover why stress is normal, where it comes from and what to do about it.  

You have more power over it than you realize. 

IT’S OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY. 

If no one has told you this yet, it’s okay to be stressed.  Life can be stressful and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably selling something.  So again, it’s okay to be stressed.  

You might not like the stress.  I don’t like stress but it doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong here.  

BELIEVE IT OR NOT MOST OF YOUR STRESS IS SELF CREATED. 

We create most of our own stress.  Stress is an emotion.  It comes from a thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry or overwhelmed. 

Your thoughts create your feelings.  That’s why we create most of our own stress.  No one else is in your head having those thoughts.  It’s you.  Your thoughts are creating your feelings.  In this case, your thoughts are creating the feeling of stress.  

You may not like this idea but I think it’s the best news ever because that means YOU have the power and control to change your emotions. 

How cool is that?  

If someone else is responsible for making you feel bad then the only way for you to feel better is if they change.  Do you see how much power you’re giving them?   

STRESS ISN’T ALL BAD. 

Stress usually means you care about something.  Generally it means you’re engaged or you want something that really matters to you.    
That’s not a bad thing. It means your life has meaning.  

Yes, stress can be good. 

You know what else being stressed means?  You’re human!  We humans tend to make things more stressful than they need to be because we have human brains.  Our brains make things hard.   

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes life IS hard… but we can do hard things. 

The problem is you begin to stress about your stress.  As if the stress you’re currently under isn’t enough, you begin to stress about the stress and all that does is create even more stress.  

Stressing out over your stress doesn't help.  There is NO upside to it but we do it all the time.  

#1 STRESSING ABOUT YOUR STRESS

This is one way you create stress for yourself.  Stressing about your stress.  It’s like getting frustrated about your frustration.  All it does is create more of it.  We do this to ourselves because we’ve never been taught or told that we don’t have to.  

When you push against it and resist it because you think it shouldn’t be there, or judging yourself for feeling that way in the first place, all you do is make it bigger.  

Ever try to push a beach ball underwater? What happens?  

The more you try to push the ball underwater the more it pushes back against your hands. That’s because whatever you resist persists.  When you push back against the stress in your life all you’re doing is creating more stress. 

When you welcome in the stress, acknowledge it, have compassion for how you’re feeling and cut yourself some slack you naturally reduce your stress level because you’re not resisting it.

Doesn’t that way of thinking have an entirely different energy around it?  It just feels so much better.  When you let yourself feel a negative emotion like stress, without running away from it or numbing out because of it,  you move through that emotion so much quicker.  

#2 THE GOOD DOESN’T LAST FOREVER AND NEITHER DOES THE BAD.

The holidays can be a stressful time of the year.  Sometimes that stress comes from a tragic event that happened earlier in the year like a loss of a loved one.  That sadness, disappointment and stress you feel is very real and super understandable.  

Let yourself feel those emotions without pushing against them, distracting from them or numbing out because of them.  I know a lot of you don’t want to do that because you’re afraid the pain you’re feeling will never go away.  

I want to try this … think back to the happiest moment in your life. 

Do you have a specific moment that just puts a smile on your face and a little flutter in your heart.  Got it?  Great! 

While that was an amazing moment, the feeling you experienced when it happened didn’t last forever did it?  That feeling of joy, happiness and love faded over time, didn’t it? 

Sure, thinking about it right now feels good but it doesn’t feel nearly as good as when that moment first happened.   The same thing will happen for the pain you’re experiencing right now.  It hurts, no doubt about it.  But it won’t hurt like this forever.  

It’s totally possible that when you think of it in the future tears may fill your eyes and your heart may sink a bit but it won’t be the same as it is right now.  Just like the good feelings don't last forever, neither do the bad ones.  So be compassionate and loving for yourself on your way to healing. 

#3 THINKING THINGS SHOULD BE DIFFERENT THEN THEY ARE. 

If you already live a pretty busy life the holidays can put you over the edge.  

With all the …

shopping, running around,  decorating,  crazy calendar, baking, cooking, cleaning, the invites to all kinds of stuff … which is good but is also overwhelming,

or the absence of an invite which can hurt. 

There can be so much mental gymnastics going on to keep it all straight and organized so that nothing gets missed or a ball doesn’t get dropped.  And that’s just the high level kind of stuff!

If you’re a mom like me, you may put all this additional stress on yourself by thinking you need to make the perfect meal, with a perfectly decorated table and getting everyone the perfect gift and have this Normal Rockwell image of what you should be creating for your family that they’re not even present with them. 

We can get so in our heads about what needs to get done, what hasn’t been done or what has gone wrong that we stress ourselves, and everyone around us, out.

This whole effort to make it ‘perfect’ actually makes it miserable.

I know this self imposed pressure and what it creates WELL!!!!!  

I can’t tell you how many holidays I’ve been ticked off or disappointed because something didn’t go ‘as planned.’ I had this idea in my head of how things should go and when that didn’t happen, I’d get mad.  

Instead of making the amazing memories I had envisioned for my family all I made was a mess.  

Getting short with my husband, moody with my mom and checking out with my kid because things didn’t go the way I thought they should.   In essence, I robbed myself of the very connection I was doing all that stuff for in the first place.  Can you feel me on this? 

Have you had those kinds of moments around the holidays or in everyday life?   

That is the stress you create for yourself.  Thinking things should be different than they are.  

Things happen exactly the way they’re supposed to.  How did I know they were supposed to go that way?  Because they did.  

You go through life thinking things are going to go a certain way but the truth of the matter is they were never going to go that way … you just didn’t know it.   

You overcooked the turkey? … So what.  It’s not the end of the world, it’s just a turkey. 

Your sister, uncle or parents decided to do something else instead of coming to your house?  You get to decide what you make that mean.  Do you want to make it mean this is the year you’re going to start some new traditions or do you want to make it mean the holiday is ruined?  Both options are available to you.  I recommend picking the option that feels better.  

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be bummed!  You’re allowed to be bummed.   I’m bummed when things don’t go my way!  So be bummed AND do something that makes you happy.   Yeah, you can do that.  

WHAT IF THIS WERE EASY AND FUN? 

Instead of thinking life is hard and stressful, ask yourself what you would do if it were easy and fun? 

Flip the script in your mind, how you’re talking to yourself about the situation and see what happens.   

What if Thanksgiving were easy what would you do?  

I have a client that typically gets overwhelmed with hosting that holiday and this year she asked herself that very question and you know what her brain said?  You’d order platters of fruits, veggies and cheeses for appetizers instead of spending so much of the afternoon chopping, cutting and arranging.  So you know what she did … she ordered them.  She let it be easy. 

I invite you to flip the script and see what you come up with when you go from this is hard and stressful to what if this were easy and fun?  It may not change everything for you but it may give you a little relief and sometimes that’s all it takes to shift your perspective and create a little breathing room for yourself. 

CONCLUSION 

Stress isn’t bad.  It just is.   When you stress about your stress all you're doing is creating more of it.   Let it be there because what you resist persists but what you lean into lessens. 

So when you catch your brain making things hard and stressful take a deep breath and ask yourself …

 What if this were easy and fun?

Allow your brain to come up with all these amazing ideas.  You’ll feel better for it. 

Life isn’t always going to go your way.  We think we know what’s going to happen but the truth of the matter is it was never going to happen that way … you just didn’t know it yet. 

Every time you argue with reality … you lose, but only 100-percent of the time.