Life Stresses: An Open Box of Uncategorized Experiences
Ever struggle with an experience? Ever not know where to turn or who to tell? Ever feel lost, alone, or uncertain? If you do, you’re like the majority of us. This isn’t an advice piece but an information piece and the purpose is to shed light on a topic the majority of us seem to think would be better kept in the dark.
Independent of whether you are black or white, Muslim or Christian, heterosexual or cisgender, disabled or enabled, we all navigate our days feeling the pressure of “life stresses”. Life stresses encompasses absolutely anything that we experience, either internal or external, that cause undue stress to ones self. It’s a term we’ve created because categorically describing and labelling our stresses leads to contrast and comparison. The comparison mindset leads us to believe that our issues are more important than others. And as the old saying goes, our thoughts determine our actions. When we think we are different and that others won’t understand, we stop talking about how we are feeling altogether. And this is the problem.
Today, there are an ever increasing number of pressures and stresses we can subjective ourselves to and experience everyday. Things that make us uncomfortable, things that we don’t want to share because we fear judgement and isolation. So what do we do, we push out this golden persona of who we think society will expect and we share just enough to have others believe that we’re doing okay. Be it an Instagram pic, a shared event on Facebook, a LinkedIn work anniversary. I can speak to how this feels because I’ve been there and I’ve done all three of those things — much like I’ve seen tons of others do. Because when things aren’t okay, we fear that we won’t match up, or be accepted as we were before.
So what’s the answer… not categorizing our issues but leaving them as an open box. One we’ll call “Life Stresses”. If we change our mindsets to be less judgemental, to force ourselves to listen empathetically and to invite heartfelt conversation wherever we can, everybody wins. We have to lose our fear of expressing our insecurities and that only happens when collectively, we change our mindset to simply see people as people and accept their flaws with nothing but a warm heart and an open mind.
Visit theflagmovement.com to see how we’re changing your view on others.
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