“MAKE YOUR FUTURE SO ENORMOUS THAT YESTERDAY FADES AWAY.”
We often think of the present day as the most stressful time in history. After all, you can’t live in the 21st century without experiencing stress. However, it’s important to put things into perspective. Stress isn’t unique to our era. People used to gather roots and berries to sustain themselves while simultaneously dodging saber-toothed cats. Sounds pretty stressful to me!
Once we gain that perspective, it gets easier to look back at the big picture. Our stress response is an inherent survival skill that works to keep us alive: fight, flight, or freeze. A loss introduces a unique stressor into our lives. Many losses, therefore, introduce many stressors. Some years ago, I walked through a series of devastating losses.
I lost my family. I lost my position as the president of a large pastoral organization. I lost my home. Hardest of all, I lost my way.
In this book I will talk about that journey and how I found my way back to joy. Let’s focus on stress and how it can either hijack or clarify our perspective. While losing someone does not put us in physical harm, a loss can trigger the same stress response we’d experience when facing a dangerous animal. We may even feel that fight, flight, or freeze response coming. I was asked many times: “Didn’t you see it coming?” and “You must have had some idea.” Loss will trigger a stress response, whether you see it coming a mile away or you are completely blindsided by the experience.
Stress triggers can come from a variety of sources, and it is essential to develop practical stress management skills to help us through difficult times. Today, we must manage stress on so many fronts. Our modern challenges may not involve surviving in the wilderness against packs of wolves, but we experience chronic hits to our mental health as our devices, constantly ringing and buzzing, leave us in a constant state of manic hypervigilance.
We feel trepidation when we consider Facebook’s grip on our lives or when we care for our aging parents. We recognize it as we struggle to mold our children amidst social media pressures and new norms. The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 all but severed the remaining ties of human connection. Forced distance and isolation put many of us in the virtual equivalent of solitary confinement. Despite all these challenges, we can equip ourselves with the tools to not only survive, but thrive.
Stress requires us to adapt, overcome, and create. In doing so, we can build something stronger and more sustainable. When the stressors diminish, we move on. However, it is important to acknowledge stress and work through it, rather than ignoring or dwelling on it. We must take power back into our own hands, acknowledge the pain we have experienced, and grow through it.
The Cleveland Clinic defines stress as how the human body responds to any situational difference that requires the body to change (“Stress”). A different environment requires a different physical, mental, or emotional response, which often manifests as an awful feeling, frazzled nerves, or an inability to relax, sleep or focus.
Psychologists agree that even positive events can cause inner tension. The cheeriest events are often the result of our most significant life milestones: a new job, a new home, or the birth of a child. However, anxiety often stems from negative events, such as losing a job or a prolonged physical injury. Either way, stress doesn’t have to tear us down. Instead, it can help us become both stronger and more flexible.
“YOUR EMOTIONS ARE NOT YOUR LIFE.”
Whether stress arises from your lack of human connection or outside stressors such as the loss of a job or an ill parent, the following chapters offer solutions and insight into how you can grow through any stressful situation. I hope that you will benefit from some of the pearls scattered throughout this book and that you will experience life again, as I do, sunny side up. Remember all of that loss I mentioned earlier? I rediscovered everything I was missing: family, faith, a home, and my purpose. Looking back, I realized I had to let go and trust God to guide me down this tumultuous river. And when I did, I rediscovered what I thought I had lost.
