How I Fell Into The Stress Trap And How I Got Out

I wasn’t depressed. Well, I don’t really know what that feels like, but it didn’t feel like it approached that level. It was;t anything clinical as far as I could tell. But, I WAS agitated. I was tense. I could feel it in my body.

I’d wake up in the morning, do my morning routine and still, I’d feel tired and tense. I’d wake up the kids for school and I was tense before I opened the door. You know how it is to wake kids up. They’re groggy and they don’t want to get up yet. You know the carpool person will be there before they’re ready to go but they still drag along as if they have nowhere to be. I found myself raising my voice and running around like a maniac in order to get everyone going. Yes, I’m the “wake-everybody-up” person in my house.

I was searching for the reason. I thought it was maybe the bills I had in my business. I had fallen into a huge hole and was working to get everything back on track. It was going a lot slower than I intended. So, that had to be the reason for the tension. Except, I’d resolved that a while back and this tension was new. It wasn’t the business stuff.

Maybe it was the other house bills. Money has a way of being the root of all tension, right? Wrong. I’ve had bills for the last 20+ years and this tension was fairly new. I mean, I’d felt it before but not recently. Wait a minute, I’d felt it before. That’s it. Now all I had to do was backtrack to when I felt it previously, or when I remember feeling the release from it.

I worked it through in my mind and realized it was around my daily schedule and how I handled it. There was a point where I decided to be more deliberate about my daily routine and cut out some of the things I was taking in, especially early in the day. My routine involved, waking up, reading my Bible & devotional, spending a few quiet moments in mediation, exercising, then beginning to write. I realized then I’d gotten away from some of that.

My routine now was wake up, grab my phone to read Bible and devotional, jump out of bed, write, wake the kids. Here’s the glitch. In replaying this in my mind, I saw the vivid pictures of myself picking up the phone, turning it on, the news notifications sitting there, scrolling past the news notifications to get to my…wait a minute. That was it. With everything going on, the only news I was seeing was of who was shot. I was waking up to people dying. I was taking in people dying even if only for a split second as the first images of my morning.

I’d given myself the excuse of having the phone by my bed because I used it to read my Kindle and jot down any thoughts of the next day before I went to bed. Oh, I also used it as my alarm.

I was jumping into the stress trap first thing in the morning. I had to get out.

It might seem as if this is an article where I encountered a challenge and figured a way out. It’s not. It’s too recent. I just went through this process last week. BUT…I do have a plan. I’m going to get a regular kindle reader. I’m going to place a notepad by my bed and simply set my exercise wristband to vibrate when I need to wake up. I’m getting the phone out of my room. I’ll leave it in the office and respond to texts the next day. Those who need me in an emergency can simply call my home phone. Yes, I still have one of those.

My wife still has her phone. Maybe I’ll get her to write an article like this.

I’m Robert and I speak about leadership & communication. If you enjoyed this article, hang out with me to get more over at robertkennedy3.com. Sign up here to hang out.