Stress and Worry

Almost everyday, I hear my family, friends, collegues and people around me talk about stress and worry. About 80% people that I have spoken to complain about what a stressful day they had at the office at  least once a week, if not more, followed by worry relating to health of our loved ones. 

What is concerning is that stress and worry have become a part of our lives now. It is almost like waking up in the morning and brushing our teeth. Every morning we wake up worried about our day ahead and we stress about being late to work, about projects that needs to be finished at work, about todays agenda EVEN before the day has started. We wake up thinking-'how am I going to finish this', 'what will I make for dinner' even though it is 5'o clock in the morning and we have not even opened or eyes properly. We worry about our loved ones health even though they are perfectly fine, we worry about our social status, we worry about our bodies and how we look, about work, exams, what to wear, what to eat and so on. 

So, you may ask, won't you feel stressed if your loved ones are sick, the answer is No; we shouldn't  be 'stressed' if our loved ones are unwell, we should be concerned. Here is the thing, there is big difference between feeling stressed/worried and concerned. Notice how I keep using stress and worry together because they do go hand in hand, worry leads to stress, worry is unreasonable and stress is a reaction to worry. Stress is a direct outcome of worry, you may experience headaches, palpitations, fatigue, sleepless night and so on. Where as Concern is a rational state of mind, where you think about a situation and take actions accordingly. Worry/Stress are impulsive and concern is well thought out. 

I won't deny that I haven't felt stressed or worried, I am human and sometimes more often than not I am driven by my emotions, for example, recently my grandmother has been extremely unwell; she was throwing up blood. Now, I am here in Australia and she is back in india. When I first heard about her, my first impulse was worry-yes I worried because I did not know the extent of her health and and my mind went in an overdrive thinking the worst. This lead to constant messages to my father, looking up tickets online that maybe I should go back to India, say my final goodbye and so on. This is what my father told me, 'you cannot worry constantly about her, we need to obviously prepare for the worst at her age but that doesn't mean that we let our mind go in a loop and start working impulsively'. He said that whilst he understands the thought behind my worry, it wasn't helping anyone as she may recover or she may not. I may go back to India to say goodbye to her but she recovers now and is healthy for a year and falls sick again what would happen then? this got me thinking, what was I doing? how was my worry helping anyone, I was constantly texting my dad and my sister to get updates even when they were busy, I wasn't sleeping well which lead to me feeling cranky and tired the whole day and I was then taking it out all that worry and anxiety on my kids who are not more than five years old resulting in them acting out in their own way. I was stressing over something I absolutely had no control over. No matter what I did, I simply cannot change the outcome of the situation. Now, I am in no way implying that we become complacent in any way but I think we need to be more rational about it. 

Similarly, when it comes to work, a lot of us worry about our jobs and careers. I have been thinking of why we are so stressed at work or in life, here is my theory-we are not content with what we have. We want to achieve the world, too much- too soon. We lack patience. We put too much pressure on ourselves. We live in a world where everyone portrays a 'perfect' world, we live in an age of Facebook and Instagram where everything is perfect, we are constantly looking for approval from these people whose lives seems perfect where as it is not. We are in a constant state of competition; whilst competition is healthy we have forgotten how not to be a sore loser, thus, resulting in our minds going in an overdrive. We are constantly trying to prove ourselves to no one on particular, failure is just no longer an option. We stress ourselves all year around to go on a perfect vacation to get away from stress and then we stress about that vacation- it is a loop. We make a list of things, we organise ourselves and when we find that we cannot complete a task on that list we feel our life is a complete chaos. We go for a spa, full body massage and feel the stress just wash away from our body but the moment that vacation, that spa or list is over we go back to feeling stressed again- so you see it is a vicious cycle. Unless we find inner peace, content in what we have no matter what you do, where you go, no matter how many vacations, no matter how much time and money you spend you will always be stressed and worried. Another reason for stress or worry, I believe is this desire for have better things, this obsession to have more than what we had earlier, this need to find something better than what we currently have, a better body, a better bank balance, a better job, a better house, a better lifestyle -where and when does it stop? How do we find that inner peace, the sense of content? at what stage of life will you be able to say- you know what this is not important enough. At what point in life will we accept that - hey shit happens. When will we be able to let go of this unnecessary stress and worry in order to actually live our lives? At what point in your life will you say- what I have is enough because I can tell you one thing the day you say- I have everything I need, will be the day you will be able to let go of all the stress and worry and actually live your life.