My wife's holidays start on Wednesday, but we are going to do a mini-trip away tonight, just the two of us. Because last year (before getting fired), I bought tickets to a concert, thinking it would be a nice way to start the summer. It should be, though it is under quite different conditions than I had predicted when I bought the tickets. We won't be doing too much else this summer, except another mini-trip with Smallsteps to Helsinki later, so getting away from the routines for any period of time is welcome.
Especially for my wife.
It has been a stressful year so far for her.
She worries a lot about many things that she can't do much to change. I think many people do similar, and waste a lot of mental and emotional energy that would be better spent on areas of life that can be affected. And even when there is little that can be done, that same energy can be applied to improving experience through our relationships with people and other aspects of our lives.
I think that one of the reasons some people are so much more effective than others, is because they use their personal resources well. It is similar to no matter how much money some people earn, they still live hand to mouth, because they can't manage their spending. The less emotional control we have, the less capable we are of handling our emotional and mental spending on the irrelevant. We become consumers of our own resources, without thinking about the return on our investment.
And over the last few decades, emotional control has been replaced by emotional expression, where every change in our feeling has to be announced to the world in some way, in the hope for feedback from a faceless crowd through thumbs, stars and shares. Whether we feel good or bad, our emotional state is the driver of our actions, even when doing so will go against what we actually want to build and experience in our lives.
Everyone says they don't like drama - yet create drama.
Maybe this is partly because we have developed a world that is pretty isolated, where we often work alone, and even consume alone from behind screens. We have broken the social norms that have evolved us for hundreds of thousands of years, but we still have the urge to share. But without the real social networks we used to leverage, we use digital substitutes which put "volume" of communication before quality of communication.
More the better, right?
I don't think so. Quality of communication and our relationships, is far more important than quantity of them. Yet, the metrics of society today have a different KPI. It is all about maximising the "spend" by individuals, whether they are spending, time, money, or attention. It is about leveraging the mechanisms in people that drive them to accumulate more, but what is being accumulated is meaningless.
Stress.
It is a natural part of life. However, perhaps what isn't natural is the triggers for stress. Maybe we have been taught to have a stress response to factors that are unimportant, that do not further our personal goals or causes, and are in service to another's bottom line, rather than anything significant to humanity. We get stressed over things outside of our control, but also by things that we needn't even think about much at all, or at least, we don't have to connect our meaning and identity to them.
Like a job.
But work can be meaningful, if it is for something larger than the "means to an end". If only working for money though, it is hard to be inspired by it, yet because of all the things relying on it, it also creates stress. So we end up stressed over something we don't care about, because we believe it is the only way to get what we do care about.
Is that actually the case though?
It depends on what you care about.
Taraz
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I think that’s one of the reasons I don’t buy things so far in advance. I don’t know what will happen in a year or even 6 or 9 months to plan something. I just don’t trust a lot of things in life to do that lol
Hopefully you enjoy the concert! things like that can certainly help reduce the stress, even for a few hours, that we are embroiled in. Evolutionarily we are far and beyond away from what we have done in the past. In a lot of ways this is what humans do though, we adapt and overcome. Sadly not all will adapt though.
For some concerts, it is necessary. They tend to sell out here pretty fast. However, one of my friends has cancer, and she buys tickets (she and my wife go) to something 3-6 months ahead, as it gives her something to look forward to, as well as a milestone. At some point, she won't make it.
This is true, but we can adapt "for the worse" also. And these days, I think people adapt more poorly than before. They still adapt, but it is a lesser version of themselves, not a greater one.
My wife, although she doesn't work now, is also psychologically tired. Because I don't earn much :)
My wife is the same, though she is working on top. The "money doesn't matter" only goes so far.
Worry is something that I think we all deal with. There are all kinds of sayings and trite phrases that are supposed to make it all better and help you not deal with it, but most of them don't work. It's easy to say not to be worried, but life is hard.
In the rapidly evolving digital world of today, it is quite simple to become trapped in the frenzy of seeking external approval, frequently sacrificing our inner peace and authentic relationships.
NO stress pls. I'd rather be unemployed than to have to work a job that i hate and have all that stress,
a mini vacay sounds all good! ☺️😉🌈
He leído su artículo y lo encuentro sumamente interesante, en mi caso, viviendo en un país como el mío (Cuba) en cuanto a la parte que se refiere a la economía, por mucho que uno se esfuerce no funciona, pero en cuanto a lo social si, me parece muy válida su observacion de que el control emocional ha sido reemplazado por el control de expresión, las gentes sienten cada día más la necesidad de ventilas en redes hasta sus dificultades mas íntimas y cada día somos en redes más hipócritas, más falsos.
Personas que de forma digital te tratan con una afinidad pasmosa coinciden presencial con uno ,en algún espacio y ni te saludan
Creo que las redes son buenas, útiles,pero no podemos permitir que se conviertan en nuestra principal motivación.
It is actually relatable seeing what you said about your wife worrying over things she can’t control. A lot of us do that without even realizing how much it drains us. I love how you compared emotional energy to money; it’s such a simple but powerful way to see it. We spend so much of ourselves on things that don’t really matter. And it’s true that even though we say we hate drama, we sometimes create it just to feel something or get attention online. This drama is often a result of our action and even at times inactions.
Life is already stressful, but when we tie our identity to work or things we don’t truly care about, it gets worse. You should rather focus our energy on something that is worth our attention and purpose. Many of us only spend base on our emotional attachment and do not really want matter most in priority in our life.
There is often a mismatch of available jobs to what inspires individuals within a local area. They could solve this by moving somewhere else, and give up everything else that is important to them. We tend to have an expectation to have everything that matters all at once.
I did something similar once, I booked and paid for a few days at a beach condominium almost a year in advance before I lost my job. Fortunately, it wasn't a big stretch as condos offer the ability to cook your own food. The beach was our entertainment.
They say stress is the difference between what you expect and what you get. It seems perhaps we ought be mindful of expectations.
I think most of the time we unconsciously worry about things we have no control of, but they have impact on us. Currently I'm a bit worried about getting an accommodation, as where I am now has so many issue and the landlord is not willing to fix these things, and I also can't fix them, because they are things that doesn't just affect me. It's a whole lot, then he has also increased the rent.
I try most of the time not to think about it so much, but it's really not that easy.
Such a heartfelt post, It’s true we often waste energy on what we can’t control instead of what really matters. Wishing you both a peaceful and well-deserved break!
I wish her some nice stress-free vacation. Real stress I mean, not the regular life situations. Maybe the definition of "stress" is also becoming a little too flexible. Everything is stress these days. Not enough is life.
Thank you.