Stress Stress Stress Stress Illusion Stress Stress Stress Stress

and now you know what tunnel vision looks like[/caption] There is a way to solve this problem, but like many problems, it’s much easier to talk about them and say how to do things to solve it than it is to act. What I’ve been doing, is pulling myself away from the struggle, and just relaxing for a bit. Keeping calm, taking deep breaths, and really trying to calm my mind. I don’t know if that’s meditation or not, but that’s what I’d like to say it feels like. It takes care of a lot of the feelings that plague my life, in the short term. Feelings of stress, anxiety, low-self esteem, inadequacy, worry, anger, and sadness. It also allows me to push everything away, and focus on what really matters to me most. The problem I saw most from myself, Hang, and many other college students while in school, was that our most stressful times were caused by looking at the entire bucket of problems, and saying to ourselves that fixing that entire bucket was hopeless. “There’s just no way I can do it.” What needs to happen, and I’m guilty of this more than I’d like to admit, is not look at the entire picture. Rather than seeing this huge list of stuff that has to be dealt with, I need to realize that each of these matters must be addressed individually, one at a time. You can’t maintain the tunnel vision of looking at everything going wrong in your life and expect to not lose mental stability. You need balance. Some people can control themselves better than others, and I’ve been fairly good at keeping my emotions in check, but there are certainly times when you feel you simply cannot accomplish what you’d like to. Two choices arise then: Quit, or modify your actions to better deal with the challenge. I’m not perfect, and it’s showing. That doesn’t mean my logic is flawed though. Hang and I have two entirely different levels of.. well… everything when it comes to buying things, planning events, and having fun. We’re opposites. Honestly, how we get along so well is beyond my comprehension at this point. For the most part, it works because we care about different things… things that generally tend to compliment each other (like how something looks vs. how well it actually functions). Finding a balance between our goals and desires is what generates what many would call “good teamwork,” and I believe we have that. But the challenges we face in life, whether individually or as a couple, are going to constantly test our ability to maintain good teamwork, and I get the most pissy when I’m feeling inadequate in my ability to pull my own weight for the team, in any sense. Yes, I can carry big boxes. No, I don’t carry a big wallet.]]>