Dealing with Stress

My grad school application was DENIED!

JK. I'm officially informing the Utah State School of Graduate Studies of my acceptance tomorrow. In a previous post, I mentioned that I was not surprised at being accepted to grad school. Here is a video of me not being surprised:




Recently, I've been thinking a lot about why I don't seem to be as affected by things that typically stress people out. Some people have asked me how I am able to handle my issues with such apparent ease. I have come up with a number of possible reasons for this:

1. I create less stress-causing responsibilities in my life. I emotionally implode under too much stress. That's not to say that I'm Stress Wimp; far from it. In fact, just today, I tried again to see how long I could wait before planning a dinner for 12 at 6:30pm. [I made my shopping list at 5:30pm. Beef Stroganoff with rice, Stove Top Stuffing, bananas, coffee cake and juice. Yum.]

Still, when I overload, it's not pretty. My chosen course of action in dealing with too much stress is to simply drop whatever is causing the stress from my life. This response is extremely effective for me at reducing my stress levels, but it is never done without serious consequences. Surprisingly, my previous girlfriend/s and school professors (who have been on the receiving end of my stress-detox episodes) have typically been sympathetic to my condition -- mind you, I still feel the effects of difficult breakups and my professors still fail me when I choose not to take their final exams. But all-in-all, I'd say it is for the best. I don't mind moving from an A to a C letter grade in my Honors Pearl of Great Price, Religion class if my decision doesn't affect anyone else and it significantly improves my quality of life.

2. I am blessed. There are many gifts of the spirit. One gift of the Spirit that I feel the Lord has blessed me with is the ability to see my problems from an eternal perspective. I've felt this way since before I was baptized at age eight. I remember meeting scores of people in Colorado, who were kept from baptism simply because they could not see past a specific stumbling block in their lives. Each of them would hold their problem up to their eye so that all they could see was this one issue. With an eternal perspective, their paradigm would have been completely shifted. By moving their relatively insignificant issues away from their faces, they would have realized that their issues were nothing more than a speck of dust.

It was either President Henry B. Eyring or Elder Neal A. Maxwell who said in Conference a few years back, "if the world were to pile it's collective problems in a mound and divide them equally amongst everyone, we would soon realize that we would be content with the problems that we have. (If you have the real reference for that, please add it in the comments.)

3. Pride is the only deterrent to our satisfaction with what we've got. My pride is the only thing holding me back from working through my problems. I bet it's the same for you. Exercise: Think of the one thing that you fear most that your friends or family might find out about you. What is holding you back from telling them? The answer is that you are afraid of what others might think of you. I know how my wise Grandma would respond to that. She says, "no one cares about your problems a fraction as much as you do."

4. Friends and family can be a terrific support in helping to manage the stresses of life. I don't take advantage of mine as much as I ought to. Each of my family members, especially, has so much great love and advice to offer me.

5. Frankly, I have no idea. Call it ESP, call it strong faith -- Sometimes I just know when things are going to work out.

Please don't use this photo of my acceptance letter for nefarious purposes.



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Listening to: Jon McLaughlin - Beautiful Disaster