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Stress is normal

It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal—if he’s living a normal human life.

And if it’s normal, how can it be bad?

Meditations 6.33

Marcus Aurelius, as Emperor, had far more opportunities for stress than I will ever have.

Yet I squirm and run from the slightest circumstance that might cause stress.

It’s not the situation that is stressful. It is my reaction, my opinion of the situation that creates the unpleasantness that I label “stress”.

It’s another example of how important it is to know the truth. If you are trying to make a change and you don’t know what’s real, where you are—the truth—you are as likely to make things worse as you are to make things better. Maybe more likely to cause damage.

Events are not stressful. The recent event I went through that could have destroyed my business . . . that was not a stressful event.

It was my opinion of the event that kept stress at bay. I didn’t feel stress in the emotional sense. I felt a sense of urgency, a need to act quickly and decisively. But not stress.

I am writing this down for my future self. It is too easy, in the heat of the moment, to forget past victories. I kept on The Path this time. I kept on The Path countless other times.

(Remember when the house was midway through remodel and there was no more money and I was behind on paying taxes and the kids were tiny?)

(Remember before I was married that month after month after month after month when I was newly self-employed how it would be the 28th of the month and I would have $50 in the bank then by the 3rd I would have enough cash—barely—to pay the rent? And how I always ate every day and slept in a warm, dry place every night?)

Manna from Heaven.

Keep pedaling the bicycle and you’ll stay upright. That is what I told myself then.

And don’t have an opinion about your state of existence, because it will only add noise to the equation. Marcus Aurelius and “in your control”.

Trust God. Take action.

But to reiterate the point about stress, because I need the simple truths pounded into my brain (“tattoo this on your brain, newcomer!” as Hal would say every Wednesday night, given half a chance): stress is not in the event. The event occurring is normal.

Stress comes from my thinking about the event and my judgment about the event. That is also normal, because I am human.

But it is within my control.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Psalm 23:4

That’s what it’s all about.