Dealing with Stress Rationally

Dealing with Stress Rationally

Human beings hate disruption. From our very first cry as infants leaving the comfort of the womb, we react to disruption as an undesirable and painful condition.

Stress is the result of disruption as we move from what is familiar and comfortable to what is strange and disturbing.

Stress is universally recognized as a load or force or system of forces producing a strain. What we feel is the strain. An event itself is not a stress unless it produces a strain.

Stress affects everyone differently and, indeed, what is stressful for you might not register as strain at all for someone else.

The same market forces that will devastate one investor, for example, will cause another to salivate in delicious anticipation. One person getting fired may jump for joy because it releases him to follow a more desirable path while a terminated workmate is crushed by the notion that his life has hit a wall.

What makes one disruption produce strain while others do not?