Dealing with stress by Francis J. Kong

"Are you stressed?

Do you know how to deal with stress? Is there someone in the work place you hate so much that person has become the very source of your stress? So how do you deal with it?

Someone came up with this idea. Now do not take this seriously. Picture yourself near a stream. Birds are chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air. Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place. You are in total seclusion in that place called the “world”.

Water gently cascading from a little waterfall fills the air with soothing serenity. It trickles down into a clear pool, so clear you can easily make out the strangled expression on the face of the person whose head you are holding forcibly under the water.

There now, feel better?

Stress is caused by two opposing forces pulling against each other. We usually think of this as something negative, but some kinds of stress are actually essential for life. Take gravity for instance - it puts stress on your body, but you can’t live without it. You’ll never be able to eliminate all stress from your life. You wouldn’t want to. But you can reduce the intensity of stress and you can learn to manage it.

When a violinist tightens the strings on a violin, she applies stress on them. The strings are pulled in two directions. The capacity of a string to be stretched is called “tensile strength.” If the strings are weak, they break when stretched. But if the strings are strong, the violinist is able to produce beautiful music.

People are like that. When pulled in two different directions some people snap from the stress. Others, however, are able to handle the stress and use it to produce something beautiful. The difference is the spiritual strength of the individual.

How do you recharge spiritually when you’re feeling stressed?

1. PAUSE! Step back from your work for a moment. But instead of taking a coffee break, take a spiritual break. Take a deep breath, quiet yourself and focus on the fact that God is with you at the very moment. You’re not alone. God is ready to help you.

God says in Psalm 46:20, “Be quiet and still, and know that I am God.” (NCV)

2. PRAY! Prayer is a powerful stress-reliever that you can use any time of the day. It works best when you said aloud – but when your situation doesn’t allow that, you can talk to God through your thoughts. Tell him exactly how you feel. Of course, he already knows that. The relief comes from getting it off your chest. God won’t be shocked. He made you and he loves you.

“I pour out my problems to him; I tell him my troubles. When I am afraid, you, LORD, know the way out.” Psalm 142:2-3 (NCV)

3. PRIORITIZE! Pinpoint what’s really important and what isn’t. You can’t do everything, so clarifying your priorities is essential to reducing stress. Your work will be determined by pressures or by priorities. It’s your choice. If you don’t determine what’s important, others will decide it for you.

“There is a right time and a right way for everything.” Ecclesiastes 8:6 (NCV)

Some things will serve and some things will master, it depends which you allow.

And then in all things give Thanks. Fight fear with faith knowing that God would not allow you to go through anything you cannot bear.

You know you are stressed when you begin to look like your picture in your driver’s license.

Pray and put that smile back on your face."

~ His article enlightened me to the extent. After all, in our everyday lives have lots of stress and I agree to it. Though we may encounter it many times, we must deal with it wisely. Stress serves as a challenge to strengthen ourselves and to learn on what we have done. Those methods pertaining how to handle stress are absolutely true. We should put GOD first before anything else since He's the only one who can understand better regarding our concerns. GOD will guide us through our prayers, as we go on to deal with stress.

For me, as a student, has came upon it several times since stress is part or our lives. Just for instance, exams, requirements, trainings and so on, these are considered as stress. During exams, not all are confident enough to answer and others can't avoid to feel nervous especially if they don't have any idea or they forgot the exact answer considering our minds keep telling us, that we should pass the exam no matter what. Requirements also has the same way, just like when the deadline of submission is too close from the day we started and much worst is, it has lots of it, and at the end, we ended up with a mess. Sometimes, we have lack of sleeping hours or skipped a meal just to finish it all and then it may cause something bad in our health. Then, another stress will be added. So, all we need to do is to manage our time properly and as what Mr. Kong said, "prioritize" the most stressful one that is to reduce stress so far. Organizing of thoughts will be a great help since we can't make decisions if we're thinking a lot of things that only bother our minds and later, we start to panic. So, just take a deep breath and then crash out all the things that keep on bothering us. It is also based on the attitude of individual, if he or she isn't determined, he or she will end up nothing.