How to deal with stress

A couple of months ago I had the chance to get interviewed by Hugo Castellanos for his Podcast Conexiones  (Podcast is in Spanish)

towards the end of the interview Hugo asked me a question along the lines of "since you were in the Marines and you've been in combat you've dealt with so much stress, so I bet the office environment is like a walk in the park" and boy, I could tell you, I can talk for hours about that. 

Anyway, yes being shot at is kinda of stressful, it can be traumatic, but I am not going to talk about trauma and PTSD here, even though that's a big topic for me as well since I have so many people close to me that have suffered trauma. I've lost 2 friends to suicide from the service, one of them happened in front of me so, yeah big heavy subject. 

That doesn't mean that service members are the only ones that suffer from stress, everyone does. What I'd like to do here is say what has worked for me and what doesn't always work. 

First, I'd like to tell you what worked for me back in the day by pure luck  When I was in Iraq I just KNEW I'd come back. I was 100% positive nothing bad was going to happen to me, to the point that I did things I shouldn't have done like volunteer for stuff I shouldn't really volunteer for. I knew people that were consumed and obsessed with fear and it didn't help them at all, they were living in misery. I just told myself that there's pretty much nothing I could do about the danger so why stress out about it since it makes no difference, if I am going to get blown up might as well not be miserable while I'm still here, right? In that case, I do recommend letting go of the things you can't control, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Positive thinking is nice, but that alone is not enough. Here's what I think works better. 

Clarity of Purpose and Preparation. 

If you have a clear reason or purpose for putting yourself through something then there isn't much you won't be willing to do to reach that purpose. Most of us are determined to survive, if you have a goal that you really care about then you probably won't mind. 

This applies to the real world, if you have a clear idea of who you want to be, what they call your "Horizon Point" and you constantly work towards that goal, then you can endure whatever to get stuff done. 

If you put your energy into what you can do and let go of the things you can't then yeah, life gets easier. 

I'll tell you what I try (but fail to achieve constantly) is to do less harm and more good to others, to the world. I don't like to hurt people. I understand that my actions and words have hurt people in the past and I always regret it, I carry the baggage of Iraq with me all the time because I have been asking myself since then (almost 20 years ago) was all that for a good reason? Did I really help make anything better for anyone out there? 

I'll confess something here, it took me 8 years of service as an infantry man, 6 of those years as an NCO to realize that I am no warrior, I hate violence and I want to compensate all the destruction I've done by building and nurturing lives. I hate it when I know I've hurt people, I wish I could take it all back sometimes, but I have had to make peace with my past and just, let it go. 

My purpose is to be good to people, at least that's the idea. It's not always easy because like David Foster Wallace said in "This is Water" our default setting is to be selfish. Link to youtube

So having a clear, non-selfish purpose is good, what else?

Mindful Meditation

Alright, another fun fact, my favorite perk for working at Amazon is the "Fishbowl Events" where famous people stop by to speak, before the pandemic they used to come in person. I was able to meet Neal Stevenson, Malcom Gladwell, Martha Stewart and more. I must say it's nice to meet the authors of books you love, but it's fun to discover new people, new things, it turns out I really enjoy listening to authors of cookbooks like Ina Garten. Here's a lady who quit a job in the White House as a Nuclear Strategy Advisor to follow her passion as a chef and she is so passionate and dedicated to her craft that I was, I don't know, fascinated? I just appreciate excellence when I see it. Martha Stewart was the funniest, coolest convict I've met and she's friends with Snoop Dogg? it was awesome to meet all those people in person. 

So last year there was a Fishbowl Event titled "how to train your mind" (not the mushroom dude, that would be "How to change your mind") which discusses how meditation can improve your focus and help you deal with stress. At that point I had heard that meditation actually works meaning that there's scientific evidence to back it up. So I downloaded the audio book, and thus my journey to mindful meditation started. 

Being mindful of your thoughts and being able to control your attention is as close to having a SuperPower as any person can come. My favorite book on the subject is Peak Mind by Dr. Amishi P. Jha although "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari brings a lot of interesting points regarding the role of tech and social media and what it does to our attention. 

I must say Mindful Meditation works very well specially when combined with a good clear purpose. 

Disclaimer: YYMV not a substitute for actual professional help for some situations. 

The Stress of Difficult Decisions

What happens when you are in a situation that offers no easy choices? I think that's still an issue for me, sometimes I want 2 things but I can only have one. In that case my answer is to:

1. Think about the regret rule. What will you regret having done or not having done 20 years from now. 

2. Think about your "Horizon Point" which decision gets you closer to who you want to be. 

Some decisions are harder than others. Some decisions are "2 way door decisions"  and those should be picked quickly, but there are decisions that once you make them you can't come back from. 

Even with all the different tools, there are sometimes not obvious right answers. I think about our leaders deciding to send thousands of people to their deaths in a war, who bears the burden for that? Is it for a good cause? If it's a war for a just cause, yeah. 

Some times the right answer is obvious, but it's too painful to make, in such cases the right thing to do is of course do the thing that lines up with your "Horizon Point" 

I recommend reading "Decision Making Models" and applying them when appropriate. I like to think of the trade-offs, long-term, short-term. However, humans are emotional creatures that can be rational, not the other way around. Reason goes out the door when it comes to matter of the heart. That will be a topic of a different blog post. 

;)