Lemon tree

Beirut - Elephant Gun and STRESS

This song has something, I don't know what but it hits me just in that place where I gather all my stressed out thoughts. As if it replaces that dark dense ball of stress and anxiety. For a very short moment it makes it all better.

But why do we get stressed? In make case it has most off all to do with something that "The American Institute of Stress" blog describes as should-ing.

I should have…. [said…done…]”

“You should have….”

“He should have….”

“It should have….”

How many times a day do you use the word “should” out loud or silently in the 60,000 thoughts generated between your ears daily? For most high achievers “should” is one of the most over-used words in internal dialogues. After all we did what we “should” to get where we are! And there is nothing wrong with achievement orientation–there are definitely “shoulds” and hurdles to any life of accomplishment.

If we generate about 60,000 thoughts every day, the average sentence being 17 words and the average paragraph being 10 sentences long, that makes for 10.200.000 words per day!
Now lets do the math on how many of those words are "should".

As we think of one thought as a paragraph:

60.000 paragraphs
- 30 paragraphs about food
- 10 paragraphs about coffee (although that mostly is a one word paragraph: "COFFFEEEEEE!")
- 5 full paragraphs of "OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG..."
- 6 narcissistic paragraphs
----------------------------------------
= 59.949 Paragraphs

That is 59.949 thoughts with at least one time the use of the word "should". That makes 59.949 words out of 10.200.000, are the word "should". That is 0,1701%, that seems quite oke right? Right?!

(Yes, the math was totally useless but the "should" made me do it!)

But somewhere along the way the “should” driver gets out of control, constantly pointing out the gap–the distance between where you are and where you should be… if only you were better or did better, had more self-discipline, more stamina, or more of that highly-overrated brain commodity, willpower. The “should” driver surveys the world measuring and comparing. And it quickly feeds your inner critic’s argument that you are not good enough as you are.

Should can also challenge one of our main intrinsic motivators, autonomy. Should feels like it is not really your choice. And in the process should can generate resentment or some feeling of “ugh” that triggers the stress response and drains your precious energy. (And to add irony, this stress further depletes your willpower!) 

To conclude: UGH!




Article source: http://www.stress.org/