Stress is a Choice

Here's an unpopular opinion: Stress is a choice.

Stress - that feeling of dread and anxiety that cripples you, making you exhausted, agitated, irritable and unable to function properly - is entirely self-inflicted. It may be a conscious or an unconscious choice, but however you ended up there, you've chosen to feel that way.

If you feel like you are having an immediate negative emotional response to what I've just said above, I hope you take a breath and let me explain.

Any number of external factors can be a cause for stress - a demanding boss at work, money problems, issues with your relationship - but while these may kickstart the process of you getting to the stressed state, the final gatekeeper that either allows these overwhelming feelings to take over or not is yourself.

I don't know about you, but I have never made a single decision I was proud of when I was stressed. In fact, it's been quite the opposite. I don't like the person I become in that state of mind. Every little thing bothers me, and as a result any social interaction I have is one where I end up having to apologise later on. So what's the solution to this? It's actually very simple.

All you need to do is choose not to be stressed.

Make the conscious decision to stop yourself from spiraling down that state of mind where everything is worse, and instead ask yourself "how can I fix this?" Get to the root of the issue and deflect or neutralise it. Stress fucks up everything in your life. It destroys relationships, leads you to make terrible financial choices, and has terrible effects on your health. Don't let it win.

Choosing not to be stressed is anything but easy. When I first started thinking about this, it all sounded like common sense to me - I wondered why I always found myself in a state of stress where I know I will inevitably have to spend valuable time in the future undoing all the mistakes I made.

Turns out, letting myself feel stressed is the easy way out of a problem in my life.

Stress is an emotional response to a difficult problem. Instead of thinking rationally and trying to solve the issue, I had been giving into my feelings and shifting the blame for my mental state to that external factor. It's much more convenient to do that and free yourself from the responsibility of dealing with the issue than facing it head on. For there to be resolution, the difficult choice must be made. Granted, having to consciously make the difficult choice is not easy, but like anything, it gets easier as you do it over and over again. Personally, I still struggle with this. It's definitely a process and I will probably need to work on it for the rest of my life.

Life is better without stress - by choosing not to be stressed, you are actively attempting to find solutions to the problems in your life, and are doing so with a much healthier state of mind. Seriously, there are really no downsides. I can't promise you that choosing not to be stressed is the answer to attaining happiness in your life, but I sure as hell don’t know a single person in my life who is happy while being in a constant state of stress.