Era Of Anxiety- The Age Of Stress:
As we are witnessing technology bringing enormous positive impact in human life we are also living dangerously at the level of our mind. Physically we have improved a lot, we have amassed all the wealth and facility to make ourselves the most comfortable generation ever. Now we are witnessing another wave of Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, AI, ML, etc. Where the whole endeavor is to automate the work process to such an extent that human workforce can go obsolete and can have more time to innovate. On the flip-side all these technological disruptions have silently given birth to a new era all together, especially the working class is the main victim which is more self-inflicted.
What The Scholars Has To Say About The Current Generation?
Peter Drucker : A Father Of Modern Management Says:
It is the age of discontinuity
John Galbraith Says:
It is the age of uncertainty
But one of the most accurate assessment of modern day has been given by Dr. Karl Albrecht. He describes the current age to be :
The age of anxiety, the age of stress
This definition is quite appropriate considering what’s happening in corporate workforce, people at different hierarchical levels in the corporate structure all are experiencing this psychological killer. No matter where you are at home or in the office, no matter what are you doing, it is chasing you and has made abode silently to burn you out mentally.
An eminent behavioral scientist Hans Selye has mentioned in one of his book “The Stress Of Life ”-
Stress is a kind of non-specific response of the body to any demand made upon it.
It has spread like an invisible epidemic and has taken majority of people under its pedigree, result, most of the doctor, 75–90% visit happens to be circling around stress.
Todays Millenials engages into heavy drinking, puffing smoke, drinking tea & coffee uncontrollably, Watching TV, to de-stress & relax after their tiring day. Some take body massage, aromatherapy, acupuncture etc. But all these are like a temporary solution as it doesn’t work on the root level to cure the cause. I think if we really feel like all these activities will help us go stress-free, we are fooling ourselves knowingly. We need to treat the cause not the symptoms.
Cause Of Stress:
There is no one specific or clear reason to find the real cause. The cause is quite trivial and happens to germinate from our day to day activity and disturbances we experience around. In family a small, small, petty issues lead to stress. Unwanted fights between married couples makes them jittery and create a mess. Relationship is on fire burners due to materialistic and social demands.
In a workplace individualistic ego, selfish motive, a rat race to win enforces people to take unrealistic decision and enforces them to let the other down. It all happens because of our own weakness to handle our emotions. People are more at war then focussing on exercising their duties.
All these happen due to the following reasons
- Unrealistic expectations
- Poor Time Management
- Lack of discipline in our life
- Seeking approval for our happiness from other people
- The desire, the craving to have more
- Due to work pressure we are not working on our psychological well being
- Not spending enough time to turn inward and introspect
- More complaint less action
Stress has been causing ulcers, heart attacks, high blood pressure and other health issues so it is a high time that we seriously slow down and see the cause to work upon it.
We need to turn inward and reflect what we are chasing and what really we are getting from all this struggle of life. Do we really want to manage the stress or we want to live happily. This question has to be asked, profoundly before it gets too late to amend the damage we are causing to ourselves .
Some of the causes are quite trivial, which can be changed and taken care of with certain discipline.Our casual attitude towards time, often puts us into trouble, we end up delaying our task, inviting raged and furious leadership team to put us under stress due to missed deadlines. We fear, our boss for not finishing our tasks in time. It can be amended if we can take charge of our time and use it appropriately to get through our task smoothly, with focus planning & practice we can master the art of time management.
We very often indulge in unwanted task which takes most part of our available time and leave us starving for the time to finish the important task we should have done. Like watching TV, overusing social stuff while in office, bringing our personal matters in the office, nagging phone calls, which we very often don’t control all these leads to less productivity. End result, we are very often stressed out as we have less time to finish what is important.
The above two causes is manageable and is under our human capacity to cure, but there are some causes which are totally out of our control, but we succumb to those and live compulsively which leaves us helpless. This stress is known as “ Psycho-Physiological Stress”.
Psycho-Physiological Stress:Seeking approval Is Killing Us
Anxiety, stress, insomnia, lethargy, depression, weak immune system these are all the symptoms of Psycho-Physiological Stress. Why these psychological stresses happen . It has been observed & written by Dr. Dean Dornish, that most people & even the well fed people often feel lost and low because they feel inadequate from within, they feel that they lack in certain skills and isolate themselves with that feeling of not knowing it all, not having it all. We always feel like we are inferior to in certain area and thus the suffering happens at our psychological level.
Even though we are well accepted among the masses we feel the entire universe do not acclaim what we have, and start suffering that. These all feeling of getting acclamation from all is what is leading to this fear, anxiety, stress etc…We suffer what we have, we suffer what we don’t have , we suffer why others have what we don’t have.
How will others treat us, how will other people see us, all these social acceptance and status fear is killing us. How the hell you know what others feel about you, we live in pain for the reasons which we can never ever cure or control.
You must have heard this very often:
If only I had more money, if only I had more time, if only I had more power, if I had more family support, if I had a killer look, if I had the thin waist, If I had more support, etc…I would have more acceptance in this world and would have been fulfilled. Bullshit, These unrealistic cravings have doomed us and has put us into stress.
All the above is happening just because we care more about our self-esteem and so we always try to look worthy and engage into proving it at all cost.
What Is The Solution Than?
Turn Inward:
Simple the moment we realize that we don’t need to seek approval for our self-worth from someone outside, the problem will be gone. We need to only crave for being satisfied from within. We need to respect what we have achieved and celebrate this very often. If we can smile very often for not having it all we can live well.
The bottom line is that your feeling of self-esteem or self-worth has to come right from within you, right from your soul and never from anyone outside who doesn’t know how the heck are you’re doing or feeling.
Let’s look into some of the suggestions which many renowned psychologist and scholars has been recommending to fight this psychological menace.
1. Change Your LifeStyle : Before It goes too late
Mix fun, play, travel, work , exercise, yoga, meditation in your daily living. you alone can change and take charge of a healthy lifestyle. Focus on your wellbeing and not how others will look you and how they well they are doing. You need to design you life the way you want to strike a balance. You don’t need to go extreme in any one single thing. bring in love, care, share your moments with others and try to bring more smiley moments. And while you are doing these be content with what you have else there is no end to this suffering.
2. Practice To Unload:
If we can learn this art of offloading what is not right for us, we can start living more happily. Situations will not be favorable always, but in this adverse moments we need to be patient and learn to let go. This ability to let the testing moment pass away without letting it get into your mind will always prove to helpful to purify and de-stress you.
3. Shed Your EGO
While you are fighting it out remember, 100 % of the time the result will not be in your favor, In that moment if you can maintain your calm, and remain grounded, you will do wonderful things in your life. Also, you need to understand this, You will only be stressed when you fail to manage your ego, if you can let go this 3 Lettered World called “EGO” , You will go smoothly in all walks of life.
4. Identify Your Weakness and Work Upon It :
If we invest to extract some solace and peaceful moments for ourself, we can easily operate ourself to find our weakness, also we can ask help from some neutral person to get their opinion to help us find our shortcomings. Once we know what is wrong with us, we can work on it, we can practice to get rid of it. If we manage to strengthen our living by shedding our weakness aside, we will see how our anxieties gets diminished.
5. Enhance Your Network:
Many social psychologist suggest that engaging and sharing with like minded people helps us to de-stress. When you build your closed and trusted network whom you empathize and can expect the same from them in return, with whom you can share your agony and ecstasy both , you will find yourself happy & confident.
6. Develop You Adaptation Level :
If one can strengthen one’s ability to cope up with adverse circumstaces, if one can bear a pain and not surrender easily against trying situations, If one can learn to adopt to the given context, one can easily tackle the stress in one’s life. Enhancing our adaptation level will make you less distraught and helps you calm down to give the required comfort to remain composed.
And there can be many ways to calm down your level of stress. You just need to remember that while you are dealing with daily life challenges, you are not bringing your EGO to fire in and always spending some time helping others live well. The act of giving is a more powerful tool to help you live a fulfilling life eventually helping you live more cool, calm and happy life.
So from now don’t do any stress management, do ego management.
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