From Distress to Success: How to Make Your Stress Work for You
Everyone’s got stress and drama in their life from the busiest world leaders to retired grandmas living in the burbs… but have you ever asked:
How can my stress serve me?
I’ve come to realize something important about the commonality of stress in our lives — we need it, in fact we crave it.
But in most cases it is harming us, is there a way to make it serving us?
Let’s come clean about our stress addiction!
Can we all just accept that we all have some kind of drama going on in our lives? This acceptance is a break from those guru’s who paint a picture of utter calm and tranquility but the truth is they’ve all come to a point of losing their shit over something that “drove them to the edge”. My point is not to point fingers but to cut the crap = we are all stressed out.
So let’s drop the veil of perfection and get real with the fact that we are animated by drama everyday.
I hope though this writing you’ll look at your stress in your life in a new way.
Stress is in our DNA
As a single Dad and business owner I’ve experienced my share of drama over the years and have always been curious by the fact that no matter what we have going on in our life we all have some drama. Why is that?
How is it that I can manage such comparatively high levels of stress and other folks can get all wigged out by how often their neighbors mow their lawn?
We all claim that we want peace and serenity but actually something else is at play in our minds chemistry and understanding that root cause better can help us put our drama to good use!
How many of you still play tic-tac-toe? Probably not many, so why is that? There’s no drama in it! You’ve graduated on to more thrilling levels of challenge in your life like keeping your job, maintaining your relationship or paying the rent.
Drama animates our human narrative
We can’t help it we are inextricably drawn to drama because it is the elixir of life, it is the conquest of our fears in tiny increments.
Drama is everywhere in the narrative of our common humanity.
Drama is the modern result of our primitive survival radar. When early man was fighting for survival our instincts taught us to be constantly on guard from threats. This instinctive survival mechanism anticipated threats all around us and still animate us in our lives today. At our core we are still driven by these survival instincts we just act on them in a much different way.
We find a great release of our need for drama by vicariously living out the drama of others like watching our favorites sports teams who we share the drama of their victory or defeat. We passionately binge watch the most dramatic online series from the safety of our couch but still feel the excitement and drama played out on our screens. It’s like recreating the thrill of a rollercoaster ride from the safety of our couch.
As much as we claim to seek peace and calm in our lives our minds are subconsciously bent on teasing out all the drama around us by pulling on the threads of questions and complaints that we have in our life.
Unwittingly we are building up dramatic narratives in many areas of our life; the battles of survival and success in our jobs, in our relationships and in our community, and that’s a good thing. Wait!? “Good thing?”.
Yes we need drama! (but not all types)
We need drama, we need narrative, we need the stress that raises our awareness and excites our minds to find new solutions to life’s challenges because without them we would be lost.
“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd
The important question to ask is which things that animate us are really important and which things are just frivolous distractions?
Ask yourself “Is what I’m obsessing over worth my drama?”
Source Drama vs Distraction Drama
Be mindful of the source of our drama. This is how you can determine if your drama is serving you? Are the things that animate you in service of a larger goal or purpose? If so these agitations, frustrations and annoyances are giving you purpose and drive. When you a driven by a purpose or goal you are living out your “Source Drama” that motivates and animates you and that can be inspiring, rewarding and great.
Source drama can come from within when we are trying the change the world around us or it can be imposed on you when some obstacle comes into your experience and creates barriers in your life.
The other drama usually manifests in the strangest of ways from testy encounters with cashiers to impatience waiting on a light to turn green, that could be a sign that you are disconnected from your “Source Drama”. You’re just burning up energy from some inconsequential drama which often means you are not in alignment with something beyond yourself or you’re not identifying some drama head on and so it’s coming out sideways.
Remember our drama has to manifest itself. Weather or not is has a purpose. Our minds will tease out any perceived threat and build it up to a mountain from a mole hill if left unchecked. Don’t judge yourself here because by reacting to the tiny distraction dramas of our day we are in essence playing out an ingrained survival mechanism, our mind is hungry for drama. Just take it as a cue to get re-aligned with what’s more important in your life.
Tip: Next time you’re at a traffic light racing to get somewhere just imagine that when the light turns green you will die. Yes die. I guarantee you will appreciate that 5–10 seconds a lot more with a refocused perspective and you’ll be amazed at how fast time goes by. This is what having a larger goal or purpose will do for your life, it will give you something to strive towards and cuts out all of the less important shit.
Putting your drama to work
Something I’ve discovered as a business owner is that walking the tight rope of small business year in and year out gets you comfortable with living on the edge. This daily practice on staying focused on revenue, marketing, operational efficiencies can strip away all the less important issues that get most people spinning in circles. Entrepreneurs become adept at managing stress and intuitively use their compulsion for success as the drama that drives and motivates them. Being singularly focused means everything else falls away.
One real life example was when the factory I had been working with disappeared overnight the overwhelming focus on something critical removed any remote worry over less important issues. That doesn’t mean you have to go out and find a mega crisis everyday to be happy but recognize the critical role good drama can have to motivate you to find a solution and leave the trivial “distraction drama” behind.
This is my theory behind why books like “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson and “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck” by Sarah Knight have had such success — we are all looking for a way to get over all the drama that is bumming us out. My proposition is rather than dispelling all of our drama we should redirect it to better serve us.
Over time you learn to focus of the things you can change and let go of what is out of your control. This practice puts your focus on the here and now and dissolves the issues that are inconsequential.
Focus on the solution not the problem!
Have a higher purpose
Putting life in perspective relieves us of the petty insignificance of most of our “distraction drama”. Having a higher purpose keeps our focus on the big picture. Finding a purpose is not always the most easy thing to discover on our own but short of having a higher purpose just focus on having happiness.
If you’re not on a crusade to change the world that’s fine too but at least make the decision to put your drama to use for your own happiness and for living a more rewarding life.
Listen to your drama
It’s so important to listen to the drama that is animating you. Where is it coming from? What is it’s source?
One of the things I discovered in over 15 years of business is that you’re always confronted by some weak spot over and over again until that squeaky wheel finally gets some grease. Same is true with what’s animating us, what can you learn from the things that are driving you crazy?
Sit with it a while, meditate on it. The answers don’t jump out at us until we can sit with the feelings and don’t judge what comes out. Blame is just a distraction to avoid the discomfort of sitting with our feelings when something is stressing us out. Anger is another false flag that gives us the security of feeling like we have some control over what’s happening but until we address the issue that is unresolved in the drama that animates us we are just spinning our wheels.
Embrace your drama
I hope that in reading this you will be better prepared to embrace your drama and put it to use in compelling a more fruitful and rewarding life. There is no such thing as living drama free, beside we would be bored to death, but when you can live in harmony with your drama you will find a much more rewarding experience in life.
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Terrence Kelleman
Founder, DYNOMIGHTY
@bemighty on Instagram
www.bemightyproject.com
www.mightywallet.shop
www.linkedin.com/in/dynomighty/
