Doctor says to me “you need to avoid stress”

I always thought stress was the one thing that qualifies you as American

Guest post written by Kevin Jezek.

Our mind is incredibly powerful just look at the placebo effect. You can heal yourself with just the belief that whatever you’re taking or doing is actually helping you. Even though you aren’t, in fact, receiving any benefits from said whatever. Stress is the opposite, this is your mind creating negative effects on your life and health. Stress will kill if you let it consume you. In my opinion, our “American dream” is the true cause of this stress. Not the only determining factor, but a major player in a struggling society.

Closing my eyes, I try to think about one aspect of our life and world that is stress-free in any way. Humans are creatures of stress. That fact has helped our ancestors survive and avoid predators in a distant time right up to our modern self who is under more stress now than ever before. If you are like me, you have most likely had a similar talk with your healthcare provider. Roll your eyes when they are not looking and say “Yeah, ok… Got ya, doc. Less stress…” that’s all you say hell and I thought it would be hard. Your amazing doctor sees you in three months….. I don’t care who you are, where you came from or are going, how much you have or don’t have. Every individual on this planet is under stress too, of which only they can ever fully truly know the extent. Kids, homes, relationships with family or friends, lovers, job, society, bills, clothes, food, health, and even our fun is in some way shape or form add stresses to our everyday life. Each individual stress combining with the next in a constant chain day after day, slowly eating away at every aspect of our health.

In a perfect world, if your boss is an asshole you could walk out and start a better job tomorrow! In the real world you can’t, right? Because your wife is still taking classes, a year away from actually working. Plus, you have a three-year-old kid to look after. The real kicker is the rent is going up at the 1st of year. $200 a month for the one bedroom shithole you manage to find with your crappy credit. So you smile and ask the boss if he needs coffee. Because god knows you could never afford even one day missed pay looking for a job. So what do you do? Avoid work? Haha, most wish they could and the ones who actually can are so bored they work. Remember that the next time you think about these things. There are a great many tragic suicides of famous wealthy people who, in most people’s eyes, “had it all” that attest to the fact that only you truly know what you need to really be happy.

I think our society has to undergo a fundamental shift in the way we advertise and propagate the idea and appearance of success to everyone but the young generations most of all. Instead, people are told that they need the newest iPhone (even though they have the one from last year), or that they should be building two-story, 4-bedroom 2000 square feet houses (because a reasonable and more cost-effective tiny 900 square foot house is only worth a pittance of the value). From the time I can remember being exposed to advertisements, it’s all been the same basic underlying principle: In order to be considered successful in America you had to be a constant consumer of the latest and greatest everything. Spend your whole life being fed this model of success and it paints everything less as unsuccessful by default alone. It becomes easier to understand why a father of two who can’t keep his kids in the newest shoes and most recent tech craze would think his life is a failure in the eyes of the society he grew up exposed to, even though he is successful in every conceivable facet of the word.

If you sit down at some point after reading this and honestly reflect on the stresses you encounter on a daily basis being as honest as you can with yourself and ask where the source of these stresses originate you will find that they are not truly your own desires that are causing the stresses but society’s expectations pushing you down. The trick is the honesty, folks. Determine what you honestly want out of life and it becomes a breeze to separate yourself from the rest of the crap holding you down. Everyone knows that one person who had a good job, stable home, amazing family, friends, but was just never happy. They’re always pleasant, but you could just tell something was off. Their eyes never sparkled. Until one day they totally changed, quit their job, and now has a sailboat in their driveway. Upon talking with them about their plans, they can’t stop smiling from ear to ear the whole time going on and on about the big plans… Their eyes just twinkling away…

There is something to be said about people who chase their dreams. This is a luxury most of us never get afforded in this lifetime, though. But that should never stop you from adjusting and reevaluating what it is you need to be happy. In a world that rewards people for having the most expensive or the biggest anything, it is easy to lose sight of the amazing opportunities that are on a much less grandiose scale. A house, no matter how many square feet, will never be a home without people filling it with love and warmth. We must work to adjust our perception of what success is. And the stress that was associated with the prior way of thinking will have nowhere to take hold in your mind.

Kevin Jezek was born on September 13th 1988, in Tacoma Washington. He grew up in Federal Way, Washington where he attended Federal Way High School. He started commercial salmon fishing in the summer on my uncle’s boat in Alaska when he was 14. High school dropout (with GED). Has had held a variety of jobs, such as working with crab, salmon, cod, fishing, construction, heavy equipment operator, landfill, aircraft maintenance, plumbing, electrical, gardening and more. Kevin is an open-minded, deep thinking, loner who likes people.
“ I’m going through life looking to collect experiences not things. Your mind is either your strongest asset or your Achilles heel depending on how you use it!”