#### Stress is as necessary as rain, let me make friends with you.
Article | Ye Xiao Jian
### Continued
A while ago, I read the book “Self-Control” (https://www.dedao.cn/ebook/detail?id=4Jjrvne28LQ2OjoRqkgdnmJX6NADGlWxMm3x1KvbBz97eaMP4VZrpEYy5VB6adNX) and felt something. Then I read the sequel by author Kelly McGonigal, “Self-Control: Making Friends with Stress” (https://www.dedao.cn/ebook/detail?id=). GkQX7yD4MVoN52PDAnlRdzK6qvg8XEwbd5WZJjBb7rO4ypxGa9LeQm1kYng9YzK5), a concept that caught my attention.
> When you assess the demands of your environment and the resources you have, you are quickly assessing your ability to cope.
How do we look at stress? Stress comes from your observation and evaluation of things. In this day and age, stress is always with you, just like a cell phone. The messages in your cell phone or SMS messages are another way of assessing the information environment and how you should respond to it.
In the fast technology, time is everything, the importance is beyond words. When we are working, we have to keep our tension and not relax, but when we are off work, can we relax? I feel confused about this.
In the old days of hunting, we needed to stay highly focused and in a state of stress in order to be able to catch our prey and have food for ourselves or our families. Nowadays, life has changed and we have moved from the hunting era to the internet era, but staying focused and under pressure is still the case.
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#### I found these three steps
Some time ago, a circumscribed swelling, an abscess, developed on my body, causing inconvenience and inability to work. I went to the hospital and recovered after a period of time. I wondered why this happened and looked up the cause on the Internet.
After this happened, I started to look for ways to adjust or what I should do. I found these three steps, in a way, to help me, so that I can choose or self-control in the face of stress.
##### 1. Be confident first
> We are conditioned to believe that we need to change everything in our lives before we can be happy, or healthy, or experience anything else we want to. The science of thinking says that the process is the opposite. Changing our thinking is the catalyst for other changes. But first, we have to convince ourselves that such change is possible.
The book talks about believing, you have to believe that you can do it, and this is a sequence of change thinking. We don’t necessarily find something, but we can do something if we believe in what we’re doing.
Sometimes you don’t change until you do it, but you believe that it is possible before you do it.
Believe before you act.
We are always uncertain and unsure of the answers we write because we are not confident, and confidence comes from preparation. Recently I saw a cartoon of SpongeBob SquarePants, the main character always likes to say “I’m ready”, ready, so that you have confidence.
Confidence, readiness, and action, this change is possible.
##### 2. Thought Intervention
When you miss something running in your life, it may create a blind spot in your thinking. A blind spot is when we don’t pay attention to how this works in real life. Conan Doyle said Conan Doyle once said, “You’re just looking, not observing.
> I call this the “thinking blind spot. The solution is to practice thinking awareness — noticing how your current stressful thinking is working in your life.
To break through the blind spot, you have to look at it from a different perspective or notice details or general directions that you don’t see. In addition to looking, you have to observe, how did it happen? How did it come from there?
##### 3. Upgrading your interpretation equipment
The same thing, different people have different views.
We have our own set of values when we first enter the workplace, and after working in the workplace for a period of time, we will have insights and experiences, and this is to upgrade your interpretation equipment.
Recently, I created a gif file, but the player has not been able to watch it because I did not install the decoding plug-in. The interpretation of things is like a player, the version is updated to see the new video.
The thing is also the same, we see something, see the mountain is not mountain, see the water is not water, then what is it? I don’t know? Because we don’t have the information we need to upgrade, so we don’t know what it is.
I don’t know what it is because we don’t have the information we need to upgrade the equipment.
— -I can’t…
### From self-control to making friends with stress
> Stress is the reaction you get when something you care about is in danger.
My personal view of stress is this: sometimes we ask for it, sometimes it is given by others.
No matter where it comes from, we are always challenged and confronted with one level after another, sometimes we can pass, sometimes we fail.
We always want time off work, time to have fun, time to get a sense of accomplishment, time to feel happy. When our stress is as bad as the rain, we will feel bad and depressed when things are inconvenient.
Without rain, there will be no source of water, and without rain, there will be no clear sky after rain. Stress is as necessary as rain, and we can choose to have a cup of coffee on a rainy day, open our favorite book to read or swipe our cell phones after a sip of coffee.
We can choose how to live with the rain instead of being in the rain, soaking in the rain.
To live with stress is to be friends with it. When stress strikes, I choose to rely on the self-confidence built by reading, to intervene in my thinking, to upgrade my decoder, and to give myself an additional choice.
So, how do you choose?
- ** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
