Stress SOS: It’s an Inside Job!đŸ˜”

Last Sunday, I visited a friend to pick up fabric from her shop to make quilts. She was closing her organic clothing boutique and had many scraps of cotton fabric sourced from various parts of India in exquisite patterns and designs.

When I met her, she sat me down for an impromptu coaching session as she wanted clarity on a knotty career problem that was causing her stress and distress. As we talked, she commented that she doesn’t like numbers and anything to do with numbers stresses her. After a short while, she said she had an undergraduate degree in Mathematics.

I was stumped. I asked her, “Those three years doing your degree must have been hard.”

She said, “No, it wasn’t. It was fine.”

“But you just said you don’t like numbers, and they stress you out?”

She said, “Shirisha, I can run. But if I think I must run a marathon every time I run, that’s hard. If I think I have to be the best runner in the world or even in a group of runners, that is stressful.

If I had thought I had to get 100% on every exam or test in college, that would have been hard. If I had thought I had to be the best Mathematics student in class, that would have been hard. I was able to get 75%, and I was happy with that, so it wasn’t hard.”

In the past few weeks, many friends have expressed how stressful their jobs are. I wondered how much of it is because we are aiming to do 100% in every piece of work, be the best on the team, or try to match the “outstanding” performance rating we received last year or try to “match” our boss’s expectations.

Doing that day in and day out is a surefire way to guarantee that work becomes a source of chronic stress in our lives.

Our external environment may provide difficult conditions, but it is worthwhile to reflect on whether our stress is a product of our thinking, expectations, and image, too, in addition to our environment.

How stressed are you? And what are the internal conditions contributing to your stress?

P.S. If you are ready to level up, work with me for 1:1 career coaching. Hit reply, and I’d love to share more.

💌 Siri