Success Over Stress Series

¡§How to Deal with the Way I feel¡¨ part 1 (Success Over Stress)

Brian A. Moon

On a recent episode of the hit TV sit-com ¡§Everybody Loves Raymond¡¨ there was a situation in which their daughter had this new teacher who loved to dish out the homework. The young grade school aged girl had over 2 hours of homework per night and on this night a tired Raymond comes in from work and is put in charge of helping her. The project was to build an entire ocean Eco-system and Raymond did most of it. At a parent teacher meeting a few days after this Raymond begins to talk with some of the other parents about the large amounts of homework that the teacher assigns. They all agree that the teacher is over loading the kids and causing way to much stress for them and the parents. When the teacher over hears them talking she comes up and ask if everything is OK? The parents all elect Raymond to speak for them and as a result of telling the teacher the concern he gets handed an arm full of curriculum books to take home and evaluate for next weeks school board meeting.

It was a funny episode to me because it just illustrates that today from students to adults we are an ever-increasing nation full of stressed out people.

A recent survey done says that one out of every three people in this room tonight deals with stress every day of their life and, Six out of 10 people in this room experience over whelming stress 2 times a week!

We all have things to do and it never seems like we have enough time to do them, and it keeps piling up until boom, we snap. We seem to always be rushed these days and the stress from all this busyness we think is just a part of life that we have to accept. I mean just think about it, today some family¡¦s even go to vacations at Mount Rush-more¡K All kidding aside stress is a serious problem and tonight as we begin a new series called ¡§How to Deal with the Way I Feel¡¨ I want to help you walk out of here tonight sighing a sigh of relief. Stress is not something that we can avoid. It can be reduced, but never totally avoided. The way we approach stress, and respond to it though is something we can have control over, and that is my goal for us, to discover how to have ¡§Success over Stress¡¨ Before we go on though we need to define just what we are talking about when we talk about stress.

I used to be an Automotive Technician and one time when I was working in a Ford dealership I had a guy come in with a brand new little Ford Ranger pick up truck complaining that his transmission was making a whining noise. I got in the truck and took it for a test drive and sure enough the transmission was making a high pitched whining noise and it was also slipping.

This was very unusual because the truck had only a few thousand miles on it. As I talked with the owner I noticed that it had a trailer hitch on the back. So I asked him if he did any hauling or towing. He said that he towed a boat every weekend 30 miles to a lake. I then asked him how big the boat was, and he told me that it was a 35-foot Sea Ray. This boat weighs thousands of pounds and was way to much of a load for this little truck to be carrying.

And that is what stress is like. When we are carrying too heavy a load we will be stressed! When you pile more stuff on than you can carry the result will always be stress. So what are some of the signs of stress? If you have some of these signs in your life, you may be carrying stress around with you.

ć It becomes difficult to make decisions, both major and minor ones.

ć You have excessive daydreaming or fantasies about getting away from it all.

ć Turn to using things like cigarettes or alcohol to relax.

ć Your thoughts trail off while speaking or writing.

ć You have excessive worry about all things.

ć Sudden outbursts of temper or hostility.

ć Paranoid ideas about friends and family.

ć Forgetfulness about deadlines and due dates.

ć Frequent feelings of inadequacy.

ć Reversal in usual behavior.

Like I said if you are experiencing some of the symptoms of stress than tonight¡¦s message is especially for you. So how do we find ¡§Success over Stress?¡¨ There are a lot of self-help books and articles out there all claiming to give us success over stress, but they all fall short because no amount of human effort will give you complete success.