Life is one big heap of stress. It seems like it’s almost impossible to not end up with depression or a severe burn-out when you look at the way our lives are structured in modern society. While one way to prevent this is to do things that relieve stress, another part of getting through the day is ignoring the things that give you stress. There’s a lot of stuff we can avoid that will make life so much easier in the long run.
Here’s a couple of stress factors that you should try to remove out of your life altogether, or at least as much as possible. Trust me, you’ll feel better.
Negative People
We all have friends or family like these, and for some reason we
don’t want to ditch them outright. I’m not saying that you
should, but maybe you should avoid these people for a while whenever
they’re going through a negative phase. Keep contact to a minimum –
they may need someone to talk to, after all – but don’t get
dragged down in their negativity. While you can listen to their
problems and give some advice, at the end of the day, they’re not
your problems. Keep it that way.
Wanting Control
Look, I know it’s not fun when something doesn’t quite go as
planned, but what’s the big deal? Sure, things aren’t going your
way. You can try to analyse how things went sour and spend days, even
weeks, pondering what you did wrong, or you can take it on the chin.
You can’t control the world, you can only control how you react to
the world.
Perfection
Perfection is a curse. It can’t be achieved, and you’ll never find happiness if you try to. There’s no harm in having things be “okay”. Okay is good, okay is better than what most other people have. Trying to achieve more and getting frustrated because it’s not working is kind of naive and not a constructive way of looking at life.
Your Job
I don’t care what kind of job you do, don’t even think for one
second that if you do your job any worse or make a mistake at work,
the world will stop turning. It won’t. We have presidents of
literal world powers that do horribly at their job and the world is
still spinning – why would your job be any different? Let it go. We
only do it to make money so we can do other, fun things anyway.
Regard it as such.
Money
I know the economy’s gone to hell, but it’s gone to hell for
everyone. As long as you can pay your bills, there’s no reason to
stress about money. Heck, there’s people out there that can’t pay
the bills and don’t even stress about money, so why are you
stressing out that you’ll have to postpone that new renovation
until next year? Or that you won’t be able to make a big trip this
summer?
Other People’s Opinions
Look, opinions are a two way street. People’s opinions can only
hurt you or give you stress if your opinion of them is high enough to
let it. See what I did there? If someone is giving you a hard time,
just draw your conclusions from that and adjust your view of them
that maybe they’re not the best friend or have your best interests
at heart. Suddenly what they think is completely irrelevant for your
daily life.
Comparing Yourself to Others
If you’re going to compare yourself to someone else, you’re probably only going to be paying attention to things they have and you don’t. Deep down, I think we all know that that’s not the best way to live, since you’ll end up resenting all the people you’re close with. Either look at the bigger picture and realise that where some people might be ahead, there’ll also be areas where they’re behind or just do your own thing and don’t look at what other people are doing.
