Stress. Stress?? Maybe not.

There is a lot of talk about stress, de-stressing, effects on your mood, your health, your well-being.
What types of things stress you out?

For health and other reasons, I have been trying to evaluate the stresses in my life, but I seem to just get more confused.

Stress can be good, or bad. Too much stress is definitely a bad thing, but then probably too little stress is not good either.

My workload on the job lately has been very erratic - lots of long, slow periods with nothing much to do, and then bursts of a bunch of things to do all at once. The slow times seemed nice at first, and after a real rush of busyness it helps to have a few moments to relax again. But when the slow periods go on for too long the day seems to drag by and take forever. A certain amount of workload (I guess I'm relating workload to stress, here) helps because I feel productive and valuable and challenged. But too much workload especially with deadlines added in obviously equates to negative stress. Failure to meet those deadlines, unhappy clients, not producing my best work because I'm rushed, - all of these negatively impact my mood, my self-image, and ultimately my health.

But so much of stress - at work, as well as outside of work - is related to mood, self image, all these mental processes that should be ultimately in my control.

As I have been trying to catalogue and quantify the stresses in my life, I find myself over and over thinking "that's not really that bad", "in the long run that's not going to matter much" , or "but this good thing and this good thing really outweigh the negative there".

I guess what I'm thinking is that things can only stress me out if I let them. There are definitely some that are harder than others to just let go of, or find the good in. But overall, I think the quality of my life would greatly improve if I made more of a conscious effort to direct my thoughts in positive directions.

Have a good night, and enjoy your weekend!!