3. Find the source of it
A piece of common advice for dealing with stress is to bring your mind off it by exercising or taking a coffee break. Whilst these may be good as a temporary way of stress relief, which may work wonders for some, I find it more comforting to work out the source of my stress.
When I feel stressed, I sit down at my desk with a piece of blank paper and pen. I write down everything that I feel stressed about without bothering about flow of ideas, grammar and whatsoever. I just write. Thereafter, I classify everything I have written into two groups, things I can work on and things that I cannot work on. For example, a few years back, I wrote ‘I feel very useless because I cannot contribute to my group project and my group mates have feedbacked to my teacher, making me look bad in front of my teacher. Even when I tried to help, there was nothing left for me to do.’ Under my group for things I can work on, I listed ‘not contributing enough to my group work’ and ‘nothing left for me to do’. Under my group for things I cannot work on, I wrote ‘feeling useless’ and ‘looking bad in front of the teacher’.
I then created a plan consisting of a list of steps to improve on things listed under ‘things I can work on’. I would find areas that are lacking in my group and step up to fill that gap, in other words, taking the initiative to create a job for myself instead of waiting for a task to pop up for me to do. After observing, I realised that my group lacks a videographer and video editor for the upcoming group video that we need to do. I volunteered to be the cameramen and edited the video for our group. I am not tech savvy at all, but I was determined to pull my weight in the project, so I figured out how to do everything (I love google). Since then, videography became ‘my job’ in the group. This group I had worked together for quite some time, and therefore, any subsequent video-making was naturally my responsibility.
As for the things listed under things I cannot work on, we need to first recognise that we just cannot do anything about some things, how others perceive us and our image for example. Hence, we just need to change our attitude towards it. Instead of stressing about the fact that I look useless and bad in front of an authoritative figure that I want to impress (at least when I was young), I chose to change my mindset. It took my many late nights of thinking before I convinced my heart and brain that there was just nothing I can do about it and the option of ‘doing nothing’ is a compulsory tick in this case. We just need to accept this fact, which is considered very difficult for many, I included.
Summary: For a realist like me, finding the source of my stresses and classifying them under ‘things I can work on’ and ‘things I cannot work on’ works best for me, and you too hopefully. For ‘things I can work on’, I will come up with a plan to work on it. For ‘things I cannot work on’, we have to change our attitude towards it.
4. Face them head on
The heading says it all. It is that simple. I feel that it is best to face it head-on.
Just like a quote I came across some other day, ‘If we want to go to the moon, we are going to the moon’ (something along the lines), if we want to relieve our stress, we are facing it head-on. Be it coming up with a plan and executing it or changing our mindset about it, we need to just do it.
Summary: Just do it.
5. Hang in there
It is easy to talk about how we can handle stress. Come with a plan, change our attitude and blah blah blah, but everything takes time. Before I could go back to becoming happy me, it took my many sleepless nights, zombie mornings, massive headaches and emotional breakdowns. Everyone currently facing a lot a lot of stress needs to hang in there. We need to bide time for our brain to adapt to our situation.
How I hung in there was firstly, to take life in small steps. When I was dreading every night because I can’t sleep and dreading every morning because I would be having a massive headache, I took baby steps by being grateful for each day that I survived. At the end of each day, I will tell myself ‘Good job, you survived the day!’. Then, I slowly moved on to other small goals like being able to sleep well, waking up energised, improved appetite. It is important to note that all of these small steps are not related to my source of stress, which was my academics and school life at that point in time. As I start accomplishing these small goals, I regain some confidence and trust in myself, which were much needed to continue coping with my source of stress that cannot be relieved in an hour or a day.
Secondly, I found it very helpful to read quotes about staying hopeful, staying positive or anything related to your current circumstance. The quotes gave me hope and helped me keep my thoughts positive. One of my favourites was Hang On, Pain Ends, which also spells HOPE.
Summary: Hang in there. You need time to work through the tough times and trust in yourself that you can get through it.
This is the last part, hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for reading!
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