The seven sources of stress

There are many reasons which cause your stresses and negative emotions.  If you are able to identify the reasons, they are classified into seven major categories which produce your unhappiness, anxieties, irritation and many other heart burning issues. These seven stresses cause probably 95 percent, perhaps even 99 percent of all the gloomy situations in your life. Once you are able to identify them and cope up with them, you will feel more relaxed, tension less and enjoy a peaceful life.

The first major source of stress is worry. Most of the people worry mostly for things which probably have no meaning. They inculcate this habit from one of their parents and repetitive worries; bring them to a level of chronic worriers. The statistics prove that people worry unnecessary. Because 40 percent are the things that never happen, 30 percent already occurred in the past on which now you have no control, 12 percent are related to health which has no basis and 10 percent classify as petty worries for trivial issues. This leaves 8 percent, out of which 4 percent are things about which nothing can be done. Balance 4 percent of the things are changeable. One of the ideal ways to stop your worries is to live a day at a time. The Bible says, “sufficient unto the day are the care thereof”.  

The second cause of stress arises when you have no clear and meaningful purpose in life. You lead the life as it is and you have no clue in which direction you have to navigate your life. In this way, you get stressed. In business environment, a poor time management is a major source of stress and fundamentally this is due to lack of clarity in goal setting and priorities. There is an old proverb which says, “Filling listless? Make a list.” You make a list, which you would like to accomplish within the next twenty four hours, then continue to perform one by one from the list, until the time you go to bed.  Because of your this accomplishment, you will feel far more relaxed and not at all stressed.

The third cause of stress is the incomplete action, say, your son has to complete his homework to submit in next day’s class or you have to present a sales forecast in a next day’s business meeting or you have to catch a cab to see your ailing mother, but your son has not completed his homework because he has wasted time in watching TV or you have not finished your business presentation because you have passed away your time to watch a movie with your spouse or you have forgotten to purchase the vital medicine for your mother in a hurry. All these actions are definitely going to bring perspiration on your face next day morning with a thought what the class teacher will tell your son, what your boss will feel and same is the case with your mother. These incomplete activities of yours and your son are going to create anxieties, tension and stresses. Of course, these are possible to be nipped in the bud, if you learn the time management properly and teach the same to your son.

The fourth cause is the fear of failure. Before trying for any job or to that matter for any activity, we always have a tendency to account for failures. It starts with the feeling that “I cannot”. This settles in the solar plexus, ruining your digestion, making you feel afraid and insecure. Even it may damage your ambition and hope to succeed. This fear failure is a learned habit which develops in childhood and if you are not able to kill this habit, it will grow more and continue to accompany you in your grown up age. There is a system of doing affirmation  daily by which you can kill this stress forming syndrome. You simply revitalize your energy to remove this stress of failure by saying ‘I can do it” and repeat the same for many times, until the effect of the failure is neutralized. Thomas J Watson, Sr., the founder of IMB says, “Do you want to succeed? Then double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure”. 

The fifth major cause of stress is the fear of rejection. Again, this trait is developed during the childhood. When the child observes that his parents show conditional love or affection, he or she strives hard to obtain the affections. When they fail, they try very hard. After repeated failures, they feel rejected and don’t want to try any more with a belief that they will be deprived of their parents’ affection. From this belief, when they grow, they will develop a fear of rejection in all their activities, say, to do a public speaking, to attend an interview, to present their idea to a group and many more. Almost all the time, they will be under the shadow of fear of rejection. So parents or guardians should not show any conditional love to their children. By mistake, if this behavior is developed in the children and the same becomes their cause of rejection, even in their matured age, then they must practice to say continually, “I should not be rejected”, until they overcome this fear psychology of rejection.

The sixth major cause of stress is denial. It also loses your inner peace. Denial lies at the core of more stress, unhappiness and psychosomatic illness. It is completely related to the behavior of a person who refuses to face an unpleasant reality, say, in your job, your colleague supersedes you and gets promotion, and you feel very upset and not able to tolerate this unpleasant reality at all. You want to get rid of the job, but the social and economical constraints prohibit you to do so. Ultimately, you are stressed, which bring you gloomy, almost all the time. It also causes your embarrassment and out of this situation, your health deteriorates ultimately causing insomnia, headaches, digestive problems, depression, angry outbursts and irrelevant activities completely contrary to your behavioral pattern.

The seventh cause of stress is the outburst of anger. This is one of the most vicious behaviors of mankind and the most destructive element to create negative emotions. Outbursts of anger are primarily responsible for heart attacks, strokes, burst blood vessels, ulcers and all these sorts. If you are not able to control your anger, the same may ruin your relationships, marriage, and loss of job; destroy the personalities of growing children, etc. This anger is mostly unnecessary which comes from your inside. It comes from the person you and not because of what people say or do. Apparently, it looks that you are angry because of others provocations, but one thing is very clear that   you are angry because of your own action. No one can make you angry, if you decide other way round. On a slight provocation, you retaliate and your face becomes red. On further provocation, you become mad and you outburst in rage. Actually, if you see, you are only the cause to produce your anger. As per the law of cause and effect, if the cause is to produce anger, the result will be the same. If you consider the provocation of others not as a cause, it can’t produce anger. But mostly the opposite happens and each time, you become angry, your blood pressure goes up and then go down.  Eventually, your blood pressure stays up. The solution to high blood pressure is not a change of medication, but a change of attitude towards the inevitable ups and downs in your daily life.

In the situation of anger, you take two steps: first, you get your anger under control; and second, stop anger as a response for things which you don’t wish to happen or you don’t like.  You try to be more sedate, patient and withhold your judgment until you have assessed the whole situation and justify the cause and effect rule. In this way, you will be able to release your tension which is the root-cause to make your anger.

Stress is harmful, but in today’s strenuous environment and complicated situation through which our lives are passed, it is not completely avoidable. You can only minimize to the extent possible, if you follow the guidelines indicated in this article.