Could “I” be the problem ?

Most of the time we read about stress – we talk about how to handle stress, how stressful modern life is , and what we can do to manage stress in our lives.

Let me share with you a couple of stories.

 I am sure you have seen or heard stories of people who are extremely successful. Working most of their waking hours. That was exactly the case with a consultant friend of mine ( I will call him Robin).

He told me of an event and how it changed the way he looked at his own life.

He had been working late one night, preparing a critical report. The client (We will call him David) profusely thanked him when he delivered the report. My friend was feeling satisfied and had a sense of pride.

 Then David went on to ask him about his life. He then suddenly asked Robin if he had thought about his son who did not see his dad during his waking hours or his wife who was raising the kid single-handedly.

That is the time he started looking at the impact of his work on his family. He started wondering if his focus on his own work and career might lead to hardship for his own family.

Here is the second story and see if you can relate to some of the characters.

My friend (will call him Sam) came back to the office after a long paternity leave. He was sad and depressed and was clearly not able to concentrate said how painful it was for him to concentrate after bonding with his son for a few months. I could completely empathize with him and tried to comfort him as a good friend. What he then said was something that I was not expecting

He said that he felt about one of her female staff (let us call her Sarah). As soon as she would return, he said, he had loaded them with tons of work as his department was so behind in their own deliverables.

Now coming from his own paternity – with all the pain he realized the pain and suffering he caused Sarah.

This really made me think about my own life and all the stories I have heard.

I could clearly see why people might be homecoming s home exhausted and emotionally distressed.

Why they could easily be irritated. Why that might send a child might feel neglected and make him feel insecure – probably leading to them bullying other students or having low self-esteem

How easily we trigger an event that creates a stressful chain of events. How we could create ripples of waves of stress thru society. The worst part is that we may not even know it.

I started looking back at my life and tried to see if I triggered such stresses. I see that there are so many things I have done – that could be creating stress for others.

This made me think about what I could do to not add to the problems of stress we already have as a society.

Listening – truly listening, trying to understand – really understanding and, not judging has been my strategy. The most thing for me has been to be aware of the impact of my own behavior on others.

I think when we talk about stress and try to hold class and teach lessons on stress – we may consider looking at how we might be the source ourselves. We probably need to discuss what we need to do.

This way maybe, – maybe, we will not force others to another stress management class.