I went to the doctor recently and was told, “you’d be surprised how many people are medicated”. When you consider the amount of people that drink, at times heavily, the number grow higher. I consider alcohol a form of self-medication similar to Prozac and Paxil. The question that strikes me is, why? Why are people requiring such high levels of therapy, medication and means to release stress?

I don’t think anyone can argue the simple point of, before Paxil and Prozac existed, no one took them. Pretty straight forward. So what did people do before these things were invented? I have the theory that they didn’t do anything, they didn’t need to. The human of today is not the human of yesterday. People didn’t have as much things to worry about as we do today. News was what the last person who came through town told you. Today, you can’t get away from news alerts about storms that happen 3000 miles away. Every hour of waking life is filled with TV, Internet, work, hobbies, etc. Even the games we play can be stressful. I’ve played a few that almost felt like work to accomplish anything.

One thing is for certain, people in today’s world have many times more stimuli than those before. Work, television, the Internet, we are bombarded by ‘noise’. Our brains are processing more than the brains of 200 years ago. It’s simply true. People 200 years ago didn’t have the Internet. They had the local pub or the family room. They talked, they interacted, they socialized face to face.

So what does that mean? What can we do about it? Anything? Should we just accept the fact that we are pushing ourselves and take the medication to help? I think the bottom is, the amount of stress we subject to ourselves due to life in the 21st century is more than the human body was meant to handle.

That said, we seem to be dealing with it alright. The average life expectancy is higher than it ever has been for the average person.  Is it all a facade though? Are we living better or just longer? Sure we go to the doctor, have clean drinking water, sanitized living conditions, and under those conditions the human body can live to a ripe old age. But are we living any better?

I like to craft my opinions around my own life. It’s the only thing I really have authority on. I myself work all day long. I work in the IT industry and have both a full time 9-5 job as well as do consulting on the side. l am constantly plugged in. I have this blog and several other websites I maintain. I check the Internet constantly for the latest news on software design and development and SharePoint related issues. But I don’t have the high levels of stress that others have.

I realized at my last place of employment that stress is just bad. It will eat you up and spit you out. So much so that I cut my commute in half, found a more relaxing position that was still interesting and realized the art of ‘not caring’.

What? Not caring? How can you not care? Easy. Just don’t do it. Now, that’s not to say don’t do a good job or don’t care so much you give up. It means, don’t care as much as you do about your family about you job, or the news, or the Internet. Having many lots of different stimuli isn’t going away anytime soon. We have to find a way to deal with all that stimuli. Some may use some type of technique like I have, don’t invest 100% in everything. Do a good job, do a great job, give 110% but don’t care so much about it that you’ll have night terrors. Others will take a medication that will biochemically counter act the stress levels in our bodies and tell our bodies to calm down. Which, honestly, I don’t find to be a terribly bad thing. If it helps, if it has a genuine reason, why not. Truth is, we are putting ourselves through hell and need to balance it out. If you need to meditate, not care as much, take something to help with the stress, do it. Our bodies weren’t meant for the stresses we put it through, it’s ok if it needs a help in dealing with things.

This is a primer post for my next topic, Anxiety. I have it and have suffered from panic attacks. I plan on posting some of my experiences and methods I’ve used to deal with it. Medication, meditation, relaxing more, I’ve tried many things. My next post will go over those things in the hopes it can help others.

We all have emotions. We all have all emotions in fact. Everyone gets happy, sad, angry and depressed. It’s part of being human. What is also true is that most people are generally happy, sad, angry or depressed. When approached with new situations, people will handle this situations generally with a similar mind set. If a person that is mostly happy most of the time, they will more times than not, be happy. It sounds simple doesn’t it? People that are angry most of the time are angry most of the time. The bigger questions is why? Because they, we, are wired, currently, to be so.

How we are built

What are emotions anyway? They are just chemicals. Complex combinations of chemicals flying around our brains. When we stub our toe an impulse is sent to our brains telling us that something has happened, something drastic. A sudden sharp pain has occurred somewhere. Our brains instantly activate the fight or flight paradigm. With our stubbed toe, we instantly get a feeling of anger and frustration. Sometimes we kick the chair over or throw the kid’s toys to the side of the room. Our brains have very quickly identified the situation as harmless and begin to shut things down. But, the release of chemicals has already occurred, and the anger we have may linger.

Now, imagine if our brains are wired in such a way to release that chemical more than the average person. What happens? We’re angry a lot. We approach most situations with that primary emotion of anger. We drive to work and yell at people. We get into fights with family and friends. When our team loses the game, we throw things.

Anger isn’t the only emotion at work either. This runs the whole gambit. Love, hate, sadness, happiness, and everything in between. I’m sure you have heard the expressing “they wear their heart’s on a sleeve”. But, as with all things dealing with people, no one answer is ever the only answer. We are just too complex for that.

Factors that play in

There are many factors that play into this. I am not saying that someone that is principally angry will never show some other emotion, it’s just not likely. Someone that is happy all the time does get angry. But, if you notice, they do so to a lesser degree. Someone that is angry all the time, does get sad. But it too is to a muted degree.

Life changes can influence our emotions as well. If you are a generally happy person, but you are placed in a high stress and highly confrontational job, you’re principal emotion may begin to change. We will modified ourselves to fit our surroundings. It’s a survival technique. Even though you were always happen at 20, you may be always angry at 40. The point here is what the principle emotion is at this given moment in your life. It won’t change day to day but may over a longer period.

Identifying your Primary Emotion

How can you tell what your emotion is? It’s very hard for people to see things about themselves. I’ve found that doing an objective exercise can help tremendously. Close your eyes and imagine you are some other person. Maybe someone you are a fan of, maybe a total stranger. Now, imagine this new person runs into you at the store, at work, on the street. Make it a real event, meaning a time that actually happened to you. Take a look at yourself, how are you acting? Do this many times for many past experiences you have. Are you generally behaving kindly, lovingly, angrily? If so, that’s it. You’ve just found your primary. This shouldn’t be very difficult to identity, the difficult part comes later.

And if you happen to see yourself acting in a combination of ways, that’s OK. There are no rules here. You may have one or two or three emotions that are at work. Each tugging a little to be the primary that you fall back to.

Identifying in others

What may help you identifying this in yourself is doing so in someone else. Take a look at your co-workers, friends, family. Are some generally happy, comical, sad, angry? Once you begin looking you begin seeing. Once you can see it in someone else, you can begin to see what yours is in you.

Changing the program

OK, so, you’ve figured out that you are generally behaving as if you were happy. Great! Happiness is the one of the better emotions to be your primary. What if you are generally angry? Sad? Are you locked into this forever? Not at all! The first step to any change in ourselves is identifying how we are now. You can’t very well change yourself if you dont’ know what you are changing yourself from. Most people focus on where they are going but don’t have a solid idea of where they are now. How can you know where to go if you don’t know where the starting line is?

Changing, though normally very hard, can be very easy if you do it in small manageable chunks. Don’t expect to wake up tomorrow and be happy all the time. Do try to wake up tomorrow and approach situations from the perspective of being happy. I don’t mean to fake happiness, I mean, imagine a time in your life when you were happy, and choose to feel that way now. Find something small in your day. Your kid’s smile, your dog’s wagging tail, your favorite TV show, a good meal, a pint at the pub, anything. If you want to strive to be more positive, make that your primary focus.

You know what all the emotions feel like, most people have experienced all of them. Pick one you like, and say to yourself, today I will be happy. Smile all day long, do the things that you did when you were feeling that emotion last time. Reward your behavior with positivity. If you find yourself slipping back into some other mindset, wake yourself up and say NO. We discipline or pets, kids, admonish our friends and family, why not ourselves?

Bottom line, we all have one way we generally behave. But it is not set in stone. Find your mindset, choose if you like it and if not, find a new one. It can be very easy simply because whatever you choose, happy, glad or even aggressive, you’ve probably already felt it at one point in your life and know how to feel it again. Now you just have to make a conscious effort to do so. Good Luck!

There are many out there that would say to use yoga, deep breathing, or some other technique to lower the stress level. I whole heartedly disagree. Stress is not a symptom that can be treated. Stress is the result of an unfavorable situation or combination of situations. Treating the stress with deep breaths will provide a temporary relief, but if the source that is causing the stress isn’t removed, you’ll just start hyper-ventilating yourself.

My advice to you, remove the source. If your job is the source of the problem, get a new one. Yes, I am saying quit, find a job that’s better, less stressful. They are out there. They do exist. Now, you may be thinking I’m crazy, that this is impossible. You can’t just quit your job, the economy is tough, you have to stay. Again, I disagree.

What is the most important thing to you in your life? Is it the job? You may think so, but I doubt it. Now, the job is important, sure, a career is important. But guess what, one day you’ll retire. Doesn’t matter what job you have, in a certain amount of years, you’ll retire to live a quiet life. All that matters is earning enough money to provide yourself a comfortable retirement and give your children a boost in life. I personally think the most important thing in your life, and most people’s , is your family and your friends. Why do we work after all? Isn’t it to feed, clothe and provide for our children and families. We often take stressful jobs so that we can provide more money. But those stressful jobs wear on us a good deal, and usually we take that stress home and it makes for unpleasant evenings, fights with the spouse and kids, etc.

Remember, the goal here is to make money. The goal isn’t to please your boss so that you have job security. The goal is to make money, save for retirement, provide for your child’s education and if lucky enough, make enough to pursue your passions.

Ok, so how do you do it. How do you find another job that’s less stressful. First, figure out where the stressors are. Is it the commute? Ok, simple, find a closer job. Is it a bad boss? Try to talk to them. Doesn’t work? Talk to HR. Still no? Do not hesitate to look for another place to work. It’s just a job. Other’s have benefits as well.Don’t have enough skills to get that other job? Learn them. Yes learn them. This is the 21st century. There are online video’s, tutorials, training materials in just about everything. I recently saw where most major universities are video taping classes and providing them free online, with materials for study. See one of my earlier posts, how much education do you need? Honestly, none. If you know your material, are not working in a profession that requires it like law or the medical industry, then all you need is knowledge. Take my industry, if you know your stuff in the IT world, doesn’t matter what your education is.

Find more revenue streams is another way to lower stress. If money is the big issue, and lets face facts, it is THE issue, and having a stressful job is required because of the money, look for alternative revenue streams.  If you are in the IT industry, go to guru.com. Like to write? Start a website or blog and get traffic to it, then sell advertising. You’ll not be a millionaire but a little extra cash never hurts.

The real point here is, determine what is the most important thing to you, for me it is family and friends. Once you have that, find the best job to allow you to live happily with them. To me, it doesn’t make sense to work work work, get stressed out, and then don’t enjoy the time you spend where you really want to spend it, at home.

For me, I quit the stressful 2 hour commute job and found work at a not for profit. It is a zero stress environment, and though a little boring at times, the benefits, ability to work from home, and increased time I can spend with my family more than make up for it. Is it the most challenging work? Not even close. Is it the best job i’ve ever had for spending at home with my family? Absolutely.

My advice to you, change your goal like I did. Don’t look for the best job for your career. Look for the best job for you family. It may sound bad for you in the long run, but actually, I think it’s the best strategy and will lead to a stress free and enjoyable life. Isn’t that the goal?