A bearded, long-haired man is running through a city street. A man runs up to him, wanting to talk. The bearded man, still running, steps on some dog excrement, but just keeps on running calmly on. The man expresses surprise that he remains so calm. The bearded man replies in a calm and neutral voice, “It happens!”
You may remember this scene from the film “Forrest Gump”.
Bad things happen to people all the time, things that are totally out of their control. Another car clips their wing mirror, the train they were planning to catch is cancelled, someone spills a cup of coffee on their clothes, or they tread on some dog excrement in the road … it happens. We know these things happen to us and to everyone else.
What effects our stress levels (and consequentially our anxiety) is not the bad thing that happens to us, it’s how we react to it. We can get angry or frustrated. We might be thinking, “Why does this happen to me?” We can allow the incident (which was entirely out of our control) stress us out.
But if you are like Forrest Gump, you can say to yourself calmly and resignedly, “It happens”, shrug your shoulders, and then simply get on with life. You have to deal with the consequences of whatever happened to you of course. You may have to get your wing mirror fixed, change your travel plans, get through the day with a coffee stain on your shirt, or clean the dog excrement off your shoe, but you don’t have to get upset by it. It happened … so deal with the consequences and move on.
You see, you have a lot more control over your emotions than you might think. You really do not have to angry and frustrated by the cancelled train if you don’t want to. If you are used to getting angry when things go wrong, then it may be difficult to start. But you can do it. And when you do do it, you will find yourself a lot less stressed in life.
And Finally …
If you find yourself getting too stressed and angry by the things that have happened to you in your life, and if anxiety starts to take over, you may like to consider hypnotherapy. If you do consider it, then Contact Me and I will be happy to answer your questions. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online.