A couple of posts ago Ruth left a comment;

And in many other forms people have been essentially asking the same question. It’s the question that I’ve been trying to work out myself, since I’ve realised that it doesn’t come as easily or naturally to others.

If there is some skill that I have developed more than any other, it’s the ability to live life without prolonged stress.  Of course, I get times when I feel overwhelmed or frustrated.  Those are vital parts of life.  But I don’t think I have ever had a problem that I couldn’t stop from bothering me for more than a night.  Usually, if I have an hour or two on my own, I can work through any problem and become excited about the opportunity it also provides. Not every problem goes away in that time, but it no longer has a negative emotional pull on me.

There’s a reason why I can do this.  I’ve been actively training myself to deal with stress more effectively for decades. And each idea or philosophy that I have integrated, into who I am now, has changed me structurally as a person. And so now, I am very different from how I was a few years ago.

photo credit: pimpexposure

So it’s hard for me to understand that other people look at life differently from me. That is why I love to read your comments and feedback, because each comment or email helps me to get a clearer picture of how the person writing it sees life and how that differs from my view.  With this I can calibrate what I write, so hopefully it makes sense to you.

Let me give you an example that hopefully can help you to see the journey I took, that makes it easier for me to deal with stress effectively. We were over at dinner at my Mum and Dad’s a couple of weeks ago. And my kids were weedling out all the naughty stuff I’d done as a kid from my Parents.

And my Mum referred to something my Sister says when talking about our childhood. That whilst she would be worried all night about some meaningless thing that never amounted to anything, I would be sleeping soundly. That while she would work and work at her schoolwork and still struggle, I would put in no effort and sail through.

It was only in this conversation that my Mum revealed she had to pay for me to sit my A-Level exams because I attended classes so rarely. To give you an example of how long I was in class, I used to drive in and listen to the same DJ who would still be on the radio when I drove home.

And so I kept getting pulled into the College Vice-Principal’s office and told that college work was harder than school and you couldn’t get through it without working hard. It sounded very arrogant and I didn’t mean it to be, but I couldn’t put it any other way.

So I told them; “I know you have to tell everyone this, but I know what I need to do.”

They told me how many people they’d seen come through with the same attitude and how they had failed. And unless I bucked my ideas up, I would fail too. I left the office as they shook their heads with despair.

But I knew what I had to do, because I knew myself. And so I carried on the same way.

Eventually they wrote me off as a failure, to the point where my Form Tutor announced to me and the class that my ‘marriage to the college was over’ and I wouldn’t be returning for a second year. However I passed all my exams and so they couldn’t justify throwing me out.

Again at Christmas of my second year, I was told that I would be going. Only for me to again pass every exam. And obviously that’s when they made my Mum pay for my exams. But when I passed all three exams she got her money back.

photo credit: ccarlstead

Now here’s what my Sister and my College Tutors didn’t understand and if you get it, it can help you understand the key to dealing with stress.

I didn’t pass my exams because I was an academic genuis. If I were, I would have enjoyed the work and devoted myself to it and got A’s. I didn’t. It bored the life out of me, but I knew I would need it as a passport to something better.   So I’d play their game and get what I needed, two C’s, to do what I wanted to do.  I got two C’s and an E.

My Teacher’s throughout my school life despaired of me because, like so many other pupils, I never applied myself. But particularly at college, I consciously calculated the cost of achieving high grades versus doing nothing and getting what I needed and decided the effort would be wasted.

The reason why I knew I could pass my exams, was because I picked subjects I could pass without effort.  Maths and English were naturally easy for me.  Technical subjects like Science or Geography that needed specific knowledge I hated. I knew they would require work, so I avoided them.

When I started college I was doing Economics, Maths and English Literature. Three months into Maths I realised that I couldn’t be that neat, detailed and precise without a lot of effort and so I switched into Politics. After a year of Economics I knew that I would have to work to understand all the complex concepts and their interactions. So I bailed out to Business Studies.

The only course I did the full term in was English Literature and in that we read two of the books in class.  I read another two at home, because they weren’t as boring, but the other couple I never read.

The thing was, I knew myself well enough to know where I would pass and where I would fail.  I knew that a certain proportion of the class had to pass.  And so, like a Runner who needs a certain position to qualify, I would look around the class and make sure I was at a certain grade relative to my Classmates.  Then I knew under the pressure of an exam, I would perform at my best and unfortunately for them, some would crumble. 

Notice that I moved to very generalist subjects where a good level of general knowledge, the ability to articulate an argument and to perform under the pressure of an exam was all that was needed for an adequate pass.  I remember facts and detail easily, so I could chuck these in to an exam essay and it looked like I’d revised.

While the College Teachers knew their subject, I knew me.  So wasn’t it equally arrogant of them to dismiss me when I told them I would pass?  To assume they knew my limits, without knowing me?

There’s another part to this story that explained at a deeper level why I knew what I could do and should tie the point of this article together.

I began with making the point that my sister felt that I got dealt a better hand. That I had a cushier life.  And lots of people look at others richer than them, happier than them or with something like a loving relationship as if they have been given an unfair advantage.  Here’s the real point.  This is the message I most want you to understand from this message, everything has only been to lay the foundation for this.

I did my work upfront.

I learned to read before I went to school.  I read a book a night for years.  Even when Mum and Dad turned my lights out I read from the red LED light off of my alarm clock.  

photo credit: brucebeh

One of my most prized presents was a red flexible lamp.  Or it was until early one morning I awoke to find my Dad, home from his night shift, peeling it away from the Duvet it was burning a hole through.

And even when I wasn’t reading I was asking myself the questions that took me to deeper and deeper levels of understanding on all kinds of topics.

Obviously part of this was instinctive.  I was born with an insatiable need to know.  But part was conscious and deliberate. 

I was lucky, I had the perfect childhood.  I had a Mum that gave me confidence, telling me ‘if others can do it, so can you.’  I had a Dad that gave me the chance to take responsibility and who looked far into the future to see what others couldn’t teaching me to look ahead.  I had a younger brother who gave me the early chance to look out for him.  And I had a sister that trod before me and so let me see the pitfalls before I had to meet them.  And she had another maybe profound influence on me.

Who can tell what caused what, but I believe this was a formative experience on my outlook.

Elaine was highly imaginative.  Where I was happy with what is, she liked the excitement of experiences more vivid and dramatic than reality.  

Anyway, one day when we were both very young, I was maybe 3, 4 or 5, we were waiting by the door to go out somewhere she told me something.  I have no idea why.  When I tell her now, she doesn’t believe me.  Anyway she told me that our Parents were really Murderers and would come and get us in our beds at night.

Now I had a perfectly happy childhood and for the most part I forgot this.  For example, like most kids I often felt like running away to teach my parents a lesson when I didn’t get my own way, yet I knew it would be unsafe to do so.  But there was always a slight doubt in my mind as to whether this story was true or not.  It took me until I was about 12 to fully realise that she was just telling me a story, one that she had forgotten two minutes later.  But since there was a doubt in my mind up to then, I had a sense that I had to solve my own problems and look after myself.  A part of myself I had to keep hidden, just in case.  Maybe it was in my character anyway, or maybe I was influenced by this event.  Who knows?

The real point is that I learned to think through problems and find solutions independently.  So my brain became trained to find solutions, rather than to seek out others to fix things.

photo credit: Corey Leopold

And as I read so much, I quickly burned through the kids section of the library, then the footballers biographies and then more general biographies and by about 11 or 12 I was reading business books and being exposed to the ideas of people like Peter Drucker and Tom Peters.  So I amassed a huge database of stored examples, concepts and principles that I have never stopped gathering.  And isn’t this really the basis of experience, lessons learned in time? 

So by being observant to the experiences and insights of others it was like copying and pasting their years’ of experience into my own mind.  And so I was picking up the same experience, but without the pain of trial and error.  I figured that if I grew my database quicker than the experiences I lived, I could avoid making mistakes.

photo credit: Dramatic

While Elaine was playing with dolls, I was doing the work to be ready for years in the future.  By the time I was 18 and taking my A-levels I had read about much of the situations covered by my courses long before.  So I didn’t need to sit through what I had already covered.  It wasn’t that I didn’t have to do the work, it was just that I did the work, in private, before I reached the situation.  So it seemed like I sailed through without a care in the world, but actually I had planned and calculated what needed to be done and trained myself to be ready for each situation.

I realised, whatever you do takes a certain amount of time.  You can either put in that time, before you have to and sail through, or you can hit the situation and then put in the time, fixing and getting yourself out of the situation.  But the latter is much messier, more painful and harder to get unstuck from.

For example, before I got married I had observed hundreds of people who were devastated by a relationship break up because they hadn’t thought to check out how the other person felt.  So I made a deliberate effort to understand how my wife felt and tackle any issues as quickly as possible so that we wouldn’t have to get to a messy stage and then work at it.  It doesn’t always work perfectly, but it goes some way to making life easier.

Before I was a Parent I noticed that Babies, and young children, likewise need a certain level of effort and attention.  You could either give them the attention first, have a pleasant interaction and then do what you needed to do.  Or you could do what you wanted to do and then have to put at least as much effort when they start misbehaving and it just becomes a more unpleasant situation.

The point is though it may look as though I sailed through life without a care in the world, actually I calculated the steps ahead and did my work in preparation.  I just did it all in private. 

So how does all this relate to Ruth’s original question?

Well to say that my brain is different in regards to dealing with stress is true.  Brains are inherently flexible and neurons take shape around whatever habits you have.  And I have devoted my life to both avoiding, and preparing my ability to deal with, problems.   That means that I have strong neural pathways that enable me to go through the process of overcoming stress quicker than most people.  Where they might panic and get fixated on one possible outcome I have developed the ability to think more broadly and see multiple possibilities. 

photo credit: Ethan Hein

In a nutshell, it’s all about training, being ready before you need to be.  It’s the difference between watching what you eat before you gain weight and never getting fat or hitting 30 stone, feeling terrible and then wanting to lose weight. 

The things you are thinking and doing now are creating problems for your future.  You can wait until they cause you pain to find a solution.  Or you can become aware of them now and adjust so that the pain never hits you.  I learned to become more sensitive to what was going on and dodge pain and discomfort.  That’s why I write.  

To share with you, so that you can become aware of it and dodge the pain ahead.

photo credit: Ian Wilson

The most common reason people give for unsubscribing from my emails is; ‘Thanks.  I’m happy now’  In other words, the crisis that caused them to sign up has passed.  And I shake my head (like my College Tutors) and think, but are you ready for next week or next month’s problem?  

Maybe they are, but in most cases they haven’t got my main message.  

What you pay attention to today, prevents tomorrow’s pain.

Tags: Stress Management // 4832 Comments »http://livewithoutconflict.com/blog/coping-with-stress/Coping+With+Stress2008-12-10+23%3A43%3A34Rob+McPhillips