And at that points in time, you start judging yourself.
Feeling useless.
Because someone else is.
Feeling inadequate.
Because someone else is.
Feeling responsible.
Because someone else is not.
Do not feel this way. Try to remember. We live in dark times. Where psychosis (for money, success, work in the expense of love, caring etc) has become mainstream. Where evil (in the form of not caring, pressing others to achieve what you alone cannot etc) has been re-branded as toughness. Where stupidity (millions of examples here) has been renamed as eccentricity.
Remember.
In a competition with fake plastic flowers, he who brings real flowers loses…
How many times have you gone to the doctor with a problem and the doctor provided you with the “stress” explanation? Is it my imagination or is the “stress” an all “universal” wildcard used by doctors to “explain” anything they cannot explain? Stress does indeed affect our body. We can see it every time we are over-stressed at work, when parts of our body who where fine before then start aching. But this is totally different from using “stress” as the explanation for almost anything that modern medicine can get its hands on…
Heart pain? It is the stress.
Failed an IVF attempt? It is the stress.
Cannot go to the toilette? It is the stress.
Headaches? It is the stress.
Doctors of today who attribute everything to stress, claim that this is a disease of “our times”. But they tend to forget that people in the past were also stressed. And I mean STRESSED A LOT! In the old days there was slavery, not so good legal system, no social welfare, no state rules to hold off the rich people from getting anything they like (not that they do much now)…
In the old days poor people lost their homes, lost their crop fields, lost their lives for petty reasons, lost their fortunes because of raids, lost their children because of common diseases… They could literally lose everything in the blink of an eye and no one would notice. Do we really think they were NOT stressed?
Think again.
Stress is an integral part of working and of living. Sure we must reduce it to a minimum. But we cannot stand seeing medicine using something so elusive and not-well-defined as an excuse…
Modern-day people work hard. They have to meet deadlines. They have to deal with pressure. They have to deal with crazy demands, to meet insane requirements, to deliver crazy delivarables. How can someone cope with all these without having to go to the psychiatrist?
Well, philosophy is always a much better medicine than anything else. Just think from a different perspective: You do not want to fail, that is why you are so anxious. You want to succeed in your goals. But what will happen if you succeed? Will you earn more recognition? So what? If the recognition by yourself is not enough, then even the recognition of one billion people won’t do. Would your success earn you more money? Well, if that solves your problems, then you are no more human than a… rock. And at the end it would not be nihillistic but rather realistic to state the obvious: you ARE going to die some day. And even though I have stressed more than once the importance of remembering this simple fact every day, in this case I have to say it once more. Failure is not “bad” in the same way death is not “bad”. Life is life. And life is not just “being able to meet the deadline or else I will be dead”! Everything that does not kill you makes you stronger. But… wait a minute! I just remembered one thing! We WILL die after all! 🙂
The word “work” is called “δουλειά” in Greek, the mother of all languages. And “δουλειά” is derrived from “δουλεία” (only difference the tone in a different letter), which means “slavery”. Who want to be a good slave?
Close your eyes. Imagine yourself one minute before dying, surrounded by the people you love. Honestly think for yourself: at this precious moment, would you really think of what makes you now anxious and stressed, as one of the most important things in your life? Most probable not.
Take a step back. Look things from a different perspective.
