Stress less

From my favorite Times of India column, the Speaking Tree:

When I first came to the United States, wherever I went, I heard people talking about stress management.

We manage our families, our money, our property, our businesses — we manage whatever is valuable to us. Why would anybody manage stress? It took me a while to understand that people have made stress part of life.

Stress is not a part of life. It is not your lifestyle, it is not your work, it is not your family, it is not the situations in which you exist which cause stress to you; it is your inability to manage your system — your body, mind, emotions and your energy — your lack of understanding of how this system functions , your inability to use the system the way it should be used.

People are capable of being stressed for just about anything. What can you do about it? You don’t need to do anything about stress; stress is like friction in a machine. There is friction in the machine because there is no proper movement of the parts, or there is not enough lubrication. The less friction you have, the more efficient the machine becomes.

The key is not managing stress, but making it less of a part of our lives through a change in mindset.

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