Stress is THE Symptom of Inaction

We can all agree that stress is prevalent in each of our lives, regardless of what it is that we do for income or the amount of money we make.

There’s always something to worry about.

And if you think about it, it all stems from the unknown and what COULD happen IF, etc.

We can all agree that living a stress-free life would lead us to a far more enjoyable life, allowing us to enjoy each moment as it comes without worrying about something that MIGHT occur in the future.

Whether it’s paying your bills at the end of the month, the possibility of losing your job, or losing everything in your business.

It’s all possible, and those worries are more than likely never going to go away until you fully comprehend them.

To better explain what I mean, here's the story of a soldier named Frederick J. Mahlstedt who used statistics and the law of averages to get over his worries in WW2:

‘Early in June 1944, I was lying in a slit trench near Omaha Beach. As I looked around my trench—just a rectangular hole in the ground—I said to myself, ‘This looks like a grave’, which I couldn’t help saying to myself, ‘Maybe this is my grave.

When the German bombers began coming over at 11 pm, and the bombs started falling, I was scared stiff. For the first two or three nights, I couldn’t sleep at all. And by the fourth or fifth night, I was a nervous wreck.

I knew that if I didn’t do something, I would go stark crazy.

I reminded myself that five nights had passed and I was still alive, as was every man in our outfit. Only two had been injured, and they had been hurt not by German bombs but by falling flak from their aircraft guns.

I decided to stop worrying and do something constructive.

So, I decided to put a roof over my slit trench to protect myself from flak.

I told myself that the only way I could be killed in that deep, narrow slit trench was by a direct hit; and I figured that the chance of a direct hit was not one in ten thousand.

And after a couple of nights looking at it in this way, I calmed down and slept even through the bomb raids.’

‘If a man devotes his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.’

What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that this event I am worrying about will ever occur’? - Fully comprehend your worries, and you’ll realise how much bigger they seem in your head than they actually are once they’re analysed.

Another thing I want to add to this is that, similar to before, stress can also stem from knowing what it is that you need to do but consciously putting it off due to the discomfort of doing it.

‘Stress primarily comes from not taking action on something you CAN have control over’.

I find that once I take action on that thing I’ve been putting off for days, if not weeks, I’ll almost ALWAYS instantly feel better, dramatically reducing any stress that may come from it.

For example, if you had homework as a kid and had a week to complete it; like most, you’d put it off until the final evening.

But with that, you’re giving yourself the burden and the knowledge of knowing that you need to do that homework but still consciously putting it off because of the discomfort it takes to do it, despite the fact that you’d much rather push it aside for something more stimulating like YouTube or watching a movie, for example.

We can all agree that if we were to have done the homework the night we were set, that week would feel far less stressful, or at all stressful, because, for the majority of the time as kids, homework was the only thing we worried about.

Picture this in your own life with work…

We have far more to do than just one piece of homework, so why not treat it similarly to the analogy above and do it as soon as you can? Otherwise, you’re just taking away from the present moment, and any moment after that with that nagging feeling of stress until you do what you know needs doing.

That’s not to say that this is going to fix every problem you ever face, but it will most definitely make a change in your life, as it did in my own.

Analyse the facts, seek discomfort, and do what you know you need to do; otherwise, you’re consciously making your life far less enjoyable than it needs to be.

The longer you put things off, the worse you’ll feel.

Oli.

P.S, thank you for 100 subscribers on here—It means the fu*king world honestly.

Onto the next 🤝