Good day everyone, how are we all doing, hope we have been enjoying our week?
This topic about avoiding stress made me thinking about so many things.
I can say that, if stress was a person I know for certainty that he or she is from Nigeria. Sincerely, the fact is that stress cannot be avoided in this life particularly in Nigeria because here I don't think there is any valuable thing that you can do or become without the stress attached to it. Just imagine a student saying "I do not want to stress myself, I will not study", Okay fine, but during the examination when the question paper looks like Chinese alphabets, who will be stressed at that time? It's the same student who was avoiding stress.
The irony is usually when you try hard to prevent stress and still ends up getting stressed. Let's take Lagos life as an example, when you wake up by 5 am thinking that you are early but the road tells you that you are not, before you notice, you have wasted two good hours between Mile 2 and CMS. Then your boss calls to ask you where you are, but you respond and say "I am half an hour away" whereas you remain trapped behind a danfo that is broken down, that is not just stress but premium level of stress.
However I asked myself "Is it really necessary to avoid stress?", I will say No because when stress is managed properly it can lead to our personal developments.
Let's think of a small business which was in chaos at the beginning, their suppliers are not arriving on time, their customers are complaining and the profits are going down quickly like data subscription.
Funny enough, in the process of such stressful moments, you will get to know how to negotiate better, plan smarter and even smile when you are crying inside.
The challenges, the pressure, the wahala which is the fire of life is what makes the best out of us, you cannot get strong without taking something hard, you will never be wise without some perplexing situations and you can never be successful running away from things that make you stretch.
That does not mean now that we should pursue stress as your destiny helper. There are people who boast that they are under pressure as though that is a status symbol, they are too busy to sleep, they will say "I haven’t slept in three days", that is not a thing to be proud of.
It is very important to differentiate between useful and useless stress. The kind of stress which is beneficial is the one which is a result of taking action to attain the objectives while the useless stress is that one that is as a result of quarrelling with people on social media or attempting to impress an individual who may not even respond to your text messages.
My Uncle once told me that stress is an indicator that you are alive but without rest you will make yourself stressed out another world. I laughed but he had a point, have a balance in dealing with stress. You cannot avoid stress but you can train yourself on how to breathe even when you are in a chaotic situation. You can have breaks, eat healthy and at times, simply laugh over your problems.
Nigerians are people who excel at making fun out of tragedy. When the generator is just not starting, somebody will say, it is resting. When there is on the road, a man will walk through it and cry, God abeg o we no be fish.
The reason we rely on humor is because humor is our coping mechanism, it is the way we survive the stress without going crazy.
The best thing to do when passing through stressful times is to accept it but do not allow it to dominate you. Get to know when you are overworking, rest when you need to and do not compare your stress level with others. Others might simply have more tricks at concealing theirs with smiles and Instagram filters.
Life in itself is a beautiful mixture of happiness and anxiety at the end of the day, it's not a bed of roses. The other would not be significant without the other, we would all be bored with the eventuality that everything was too easy.
The little wins are so great as we had to struggle with dread and sweats and tears to achieve them and you can learn to dance in the midst of it, laugh at it and grow out of it.
Thank you so much for staying this far, hope you had a good read with me, see you again next time 🤗.
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