Dealing with stress in life
Although we all want to look at a new year with optimism, some years it is tough to do this.
This is a particularly tough year for farmers. I talked with several people this past month, whose hopes and dreams about their marriages have been shattered by abuse or abandonment, or whose lives feel totally empty after the death of a loved one. I have also worked with many people for whom 1999 will not be the edge of the millennium, but just another year of struggling to cope and live with unpleasant realities in their lives.
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Vintage power on display at Saskatchewan tractor pull
At the Ag in Motion farm show held earlier this year near Langham, Sask., a vintage tractor pull event drew pretty significant crowds of show goers, who were mostly farmers.
It’s easy to say “grin and bear it,” especially if it is someone else who has to do the grinning and bearing. It’s hard to smile if there is nothing to be happy about. And there is no rule saying you must.
But becoming bitter, angry or resentful won’t help you cope with an unpleasant situation. If anything, it will seem worse.
What then, can you do when things are tough in life? The first, and often most difficult task for people, especially for men, is to admit that things are tough. The most common human responses to any problem in life are to minimize it, deny it or blame it on someone else.
If we minimize, we don’t respond soon enough or strongly enough to our problems. If we deny, we don’t even admit that the problem is there and it will likely get worse.
And if we blame, we waste energy we might have been able to use to cope with the problem. After having blamed someone, how do you feel? Exhausted? Useless? No further ahead? Most likely.
There is a big difference between blaming someone and holding them accountable. When you blame people, they will defend themselves in whatever way they can. They will deny the problem is their responsibility. They may blame someone else or even shift blame to the accuser.
What are the best ways to cope when things get tough? First, accept that they are tough. Second, get all the facts, and double check them. Just because someone says they are true, doesn’t necessarily nake it so.
Then explore your options, realistically. Identify those that are useless as soon as possible and throw them away. That way they won’t be coming back to bug you all the time. There aren’t any sure-fire options. If there were, it wouldn’t be a tough time.
Write down every option you can think of, even if at first it doesn’t look that great. Then explore the options, one at a time. Get as much information as you can. The more you know about an option and its possible consequences, the better you can evaluate it. Once you have done this, you have a difficult decision to make. Might it be better to try one of them, or do nothing and wait it out?
The best advice I have ever come across for dealing with tough times, is a prayer from St. Francis of Assisi, adapted into what is commonly known, in AA, as The Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the courage to change what I can change, the serenity to accept what I can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference.”
