This reminds me of a story that I heard about 20 years ago. I apologize in advance if I don't get all of the details exactly correct. In general, the story goes like this.
There was a little village. In this village was a wise man who oversaw all of the workings of the village and made sure everybody worked harmoniously with each other. He was also available for answering questions.
One day he was visited by one of the villagers. This villager started talking to him about his problems. He went on and on about all of his problems.
Finally, when he was done, the wise man said to him, “You don't have a thousand problems. You have one problem? You want to not have any problems?”
That's the central theme of this article.
We may not consciously acknowledge that we want our lives to be perfect. But what happens when it's not? What happens when things don't go our way or don't go as expected? How do we react to it? Are we reacting as if life was supposed to be perfect?
Life is never going to be perfect. We are always going to have problems. Once you solve one problem, another one will come into its place. Once you realize that the next step is deciding on the best stress management technique to deal with it.
Having problems is normal. The kind of problems that you have may not be normal. But having problems is normal. Having to deal with problems is normal. If you have problems that you have to deal with, you're normal. Your problems, as I mentioned before, may not be normal, but the fact that you have problems makes you normal. The fact that you have to deal with problems makes you normal.
If you choose not to deal with your problems, that's a whole different story and should not be considered normal. Burying your head in the sand, pretending that your problems don't exist, using denial, repression, suppression and all of the different ways we try to avoid dealing with our problems only makes things worse.
The moral of the story is we all have problems. We will always have problems. The real question is how do we face those problems? And who are we in comparison to the problems?
Are the problems huge and we're small. Or is there a way that you can make yourself bigger than your problems? I'll give you a hint. With stress management, you can make yourself bigger than your problems.
So, if you want to stay stressed, expect life to be perfect.