Context (Background)
Investing in our wellness IS dealing with stress and energy. Investing in wellness does not have to be spending thousands of dollars on meditation retreats, self-help books, expensive coaches (haha yes, I’m a life coach), or a mental disorder diagnoses. Finding ways or opportunities in our everyday lives to execute our purposes will not only increase the probability of meaning but will make the journey of life meaningful in itself. You would be making the journey of your life matter! For instance, I help smart, high-achieving teens and young adults improve their critical thinking skills and creativity, reach academic success, and develop stress management skills. My intention, as a coach, is to be of little help because I already know my clients are already creative, resourceful, and whole as human beings. However, I cannot be of service unless I understand their life purposes. I do not help people seek their purpose in life because we already know what matters to us. There is no point in seeking what is already in us. My first step is to help a client understand the logic of creating intentions and aligning thoughts and actions with those intentions. I want to help you create your purposes for wellness. In order to that, we humans need to learn to deal with our stress and energy for the benefit of our future and everyone else’s.
Purpose (objectives, goals, desired outcome, intention, function)
My purpose in dealing with stress is to feel it and then unload it in a way that does not harm me, harm anyone else, or harm anything within reason. In other words, pressure can provoke the body to manifest a variety of feelings from anger, to frustration, to sadness, and even calmness — believe it or not. These feelings are more of a warning system for the body but sometimes they can lead to harm if not given a purpose. For example, as an International Baccalaureate (IB) high-school student, I was far too familiar with the pressure that came with the piles of homework, the balancing of extracurricular activities, the future planning, school counselor meetings, the requirements to meet, and to sleep at some point. My eagerness to reach the vision for my life helped me stay on track and become a straight A student on the outside. On the inside, however, I had bubbling energy and curiosity that was hard to contain within the confines of school subjects. The pressure I created for myself from school was useful to quell the energy that wasn’t directed at school. But energy doesn’t dissipate, it will leak! I would end up working into the night with few hours of sleep. The lack of sleep was harmful to me physically. Although, the sleepless nights were unreasonable from an objective point of view-it was reasonable from my point of view. I didn’t feel tired at regular sleep times and the anxiety of making choice after choice during the day caused fatigue during the day. That excess energy had no other purpose so it needed to manifest somehow. My energy resembled a stress ball. When pressure was applied it shrunk to a smaller version of itself. When the pressure was released, the ball would return to its original shape.
Question at Issue (problem, topic, “the point”, “Q at I”)
My question at issue as a teenager was: How do I find a safe way to unload stress? The problem was I was not aware of a tactic or strategy that could help me unload the mental energy in a productive way. I didn’t know I was even supposed to have one! In other words, I was not always intellectually engaged in school so school was not a way to unload excess energy, just shrink it to submission. School was a means to meet requirements, expectations, and get rewarded for it — so I complied with the seemingly useful education system. It was useful because my compliance led to being accepted to the universities of my choice — that was the reward. But I wasn’t learning how to comply with my own inner requirements, my inner expectations — my core values. For example, my vision as a high-school student was to become an aerospace engineer and I did become one. I was excellent in math and I felt amazing when I received a 100% on a calculus test — but I loved my english classes. I had a devotion to the written word and fascination with the meaning I could illicit through my creative arrangement of words. However, that was not enough for me at the time to consider it a means to pursue higher-education. Devotion was not on my to do list but discipline to my goals was. However, my discipline was in meeting external requirements and not always in meeting my own internal ones. I did not know myself well enough to understand that discipline and devotion was the recipe to passion. Unloading or releasing energy effectively and productively is like any water pipe functioning the way it’s supposed to. Human beings function like they are supposed to when we focus on what matters to us: our values, healthy bodies, helpful thoughts, safe environments, personalities that give us freedom — are all aspects of wellness. Our pipes will burst through materials that are not up to code, even from a seemingly insignificant crack or thin patch of material if we don’t pay attention to our stress and energy.
Assumptions (background theory, what is given or what is taken for granted, axioms)
I believe there is no perfect tactic or strategy to unload all stress from our unique human systems. If there was, we wouldn’t be lucky enough to participate in the golden opportunity it is to experience meaning. Without living through the ups and downs, there would be no feelings of meaning, happiness, anger, or calmness. Breathing in and out is evidence that we can continue to experience the privilege of making something out of this spontaneous or divine animation — - in whatever belief system that floats your boat. Pressure can come from our circumstances, our formed personality, our state of mind. These are all real factors that can affect our discipline and devotion to a chosen purpose. For example, I chose to write this article today because I have been feeling pressure to enter a project that is valuable to me, but the pressure will not only come from my own expectations, it will come from others, as well. It is reasonable for me to take a minute to feel, wonder, and reject the pressure that will come. After I take a minute, though, I will have to make a decision as to whether or not I will accept the pressure that comes with saying yes. Saying yes means accepting I will experience discomfort. Understanding that it is my decision, removes any possibility of regret and the added stress that comes with it. Accepting that I will be susceptible to pressure that moves me, changes me, deforms me, or makes me more malleable is like a fuselage in flight. With every take-off and landing, the internal and external pressure of the fuselage changes because the atmosphere changes. These changes, however, are anticipated and do not deter the airplane from reaching its destination.
Implications and Consequences (what follows, costs and benefits)
The implications with having imperfect stress management strategies is that failure might occur. Unlike an airplane’s fuselage, failure isn’t final for you or me. Failure has its costs and benefits, though. In other words, failure, catastrophe, disaster, disappointment, loss — whatever term rings true at the time — causes pain and pressure. For example, emotional pain as teenagers promotes maturation. Feeling the emotional impact of difficult experiences helps us to grow up. Being inspired by arts and literature helps us mature, as well, says Dr. Lisa Damour in The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. In other words, emotions are sometimes painful but they are rarely harmful. On the other hand, pain and pressure from an event can cross a line from disquieting to traumatic, which can generate lasting damage. “Trauma” refers to the overwhelming emotional impact of a horrible event, never to the event itself. It occurs when an individual suffers greater emotional stress than that person can find a way to tolerate and can harm the functioning of the nervous system according to Dr. Damour. Imperfect stress management is trial and error as we learn to cope and manage the right feelings at the right time effectively. There is no “wrong” feeling. It’s just about making sure our emotions make sense and are proportional to the situation. Emotional does not mean weak. Emotions are like your key performance indicators (KPIs). They can gauge how well the body is performing on its own core value system.
Information (data, evidence, observations)
The information needed to answer the question at issue lies in the heart of what matters to me or to you. In order to safely unload stress or excess energy in a productive way, I need to have a better understanding of my purposes in life, my daily intentions, my weekly plans, and my vision for my future! In other words, setting an intention and planning a day, a week, a month, and a year is the life organization I need to increase the probability of meaning, joy, peace, and happiness in my life. These feelings are not guaranteed but I have a greater chance in experiencing them if I choose the purposes that matter to me. For example, creating a menu of things that matter to me and formulating my daily intentions to invest in the things that matter to me will help me see new paths to take and what values to evaluate them against. The “work” I need to do to stay on the path is the alignment of my thought and actions to that path-which sounds easy in the abstract, but it’s really not. Its hard! Until I have learned the art of stepping to the side of the path for greater self-awareness of my thoughts, I need to somehow maintain that vision of hope that I will continue to move along that path and reach that vision of wellness in my life. Can you imagine our beautiful world where everyone did this work and reached their highest potential?
Point of View (frame of reference, perspective)
As a life coach for teens and young adults, I learned that clients choose to talk to me because they have a choice that matters to them and they need a helpful voice to reinforce what matters to them. Sometimes I become that helpful voice that disputes those unproductive thoughts until my clients are ready to take over. For example, unproductive thoughts can sound like this: ‘I’m not smart enough’, ‘I’m not brave enough’, ‘I’m not strong enough’, ‘I don’t have enough’, or ‘I’m not confident enough’. I serve as a warm, compassionate presence who can listen without judgement and who has no definite answers to give. For example, I can hear where my clients are in their process, where they are out of balance, and hear their progress on the journey to fulfillment. Identifying this information helps me help them stay on the path they intend to walk. Until my clients realize that being creative, resourceful, and whole is not a fleeting feeling that comes and goes, I continue to help them realize they are just that until they dont need me anymore. But I don’t have solutions or answers for them, they do. Connecting with a client as a coach is like being a single wave in a large ocean for a moment and then becoming part of a whole again as the current goes on. I’m an individual with her own belief systems, life purposes, philosophies, and passions just like the single wave in the ocean of humankind. I become part of a whole when my purpose is “to help” during a 45–60 minute coaching session.
Conclusions, Interpretations (inferences, solutions, decisions arrived at)
So, I learned to unload stress and excess energy in a useful, meaningful, and productive way by focusing on things that matter to me. The truth is I’ve learned to figure it out all by myself with the help of very loving, honest, intuitive, and genuine human beings who give me the boost I need when I need it. For example, my mother has been the most imperfect and best human to unload any painful feelings I had as a teen and even as an adult! At other times, my coaches have made wonderful suggestions with no judgement or answers, just presence and the wisdom of their living experience as fellow humans. My puppies helped me see the beauty in my world when I had trouble recognizing it. These living beings understood what mattered to me and they helped me see even more of it through their eyes. Deciding what matters to you is like deciding to matter. You matter. Period.
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If you’re interested in creativity coaching with me, contact me at [email protected]. For further information, check out my site at www.thebutronmethod.com
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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