stress

Crisis Management

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Take my advice—I’m not using it.” I can tell you to keep calm. I might insist that you keep calm. But as someone who can introduce stress into the least stressful, sweetly innocuous, and even pleasant experiences in life, when I am confronted with the parts of life that others find truly stressful, I hunker down and find the effort deep inside myself to make them yet more stressful.

In one of my lesser achievements in the field of stress management, I gave myself a black eye while tying my shoes. These were boots with leather laces (I am not a cowboy) and such laces take a little effort to yank into position. While securing my “half-knot” on my right shoe, the length of lace in my left hand broke and I clocked myself in the right eye. At the time, I was 34 years old, not 11.
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Tales of Derring-Don’t

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Take my advice—I’m not using it.” I can tell you to keep calm. I might insist that you keep calm. But as someone who can introduce stress into the least stressful, sweetly innocuous, and even pleasant experiences in life, when I am confronted with the parts of life that others find truly stressful, I hunker down and find the effort deep inside myself to make them yet more stressful.

In one of my lesser achievements in the field of stress management, I gave myself a black eye while tying my shoes. These were boots with leather laces (I am not a cowboy) and such laces take a little effort to yank into position. While securing my “half-knot” on my right shoe, the length of lace in my left hand broke and I clocked myself in the right eye. At the time, I was 34 years old, not eleven.
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Stop Stressing Me Out!

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The same friend who used to reply to my complaints about old pains and new aches with a cheerful, “But you’ve never been 45 (or whatever) before,” also used to say, “Remember, it’s just Tuesday (or whatever day)” when a person would confess to feeling anxious about an upcoming big event or holiday.

“It’s only a Saturday. Same as all the other ones. Sunday will come next.”

Yes, yes, it is the same, definitely the same as all the other Saturdays, indeed, but it is a Saturday with the addition of my wedding or taking the GRE or LSAT or … . An event-focused Saturday is an impersonation of all the other Saturdays. An awards ceremony is not just another setting for a mediocre hotel meal, even though it is that, too. So thanks for not helping us out there, not even one bit, Mister Calm Guy.

How does one keep that inner calm, that sense of appropriate perspective? The answer lies in that word “perspective,” and there is only one thing that adds perspective to one’s life: Doing things. Experience gives one a chance to develop some perspective about whether or not something is worth worrying over or not.

Chaucer’s Wife of Bath says experience gives us no authority to speak on anything but our own experience of life, but it is sufficient.

In “Stress,” a memoir I wrote about my own anxious life lived in anxiety and anxious worries about the possibility of future anxieties brought on by past worries of anxieties that I may be too anxious, I recounted several hilarious escapades involving my personal levels of tension, including giving myself a black eye while mis-tying my shoe.

Thus, my advice to me when faced with a big journey or a ceremonial event or a test is to acknowledge that I will be anxious, remind myself that the fun/important part is in the journey, that I will most likely discover new ways to be flabbergasted and to flabbergast, and to enjoy the ride. Whenever I attempt to deny myself my anxiety, I deny myself feelings, and I re-learn that repressed feelings will explode.

Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t you dare tell me to keep calm, I tell myself. And then calm follows.
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The WordPress Daily Prompt for October 4 asks, “It’s the night before an important event: a big exam, a major presentation, your wedding. How do you calm your nerves in preparation for the big day?”