Causes of Stress
- Be dependent on others! We are not meant to be alone and it is only fair to expect others to do things for us. If you can count on someone else to do the job, then let them do it. Avoid going to new place on your own and never associate with new people. Always go to new places with a friend. If your friend is not coming to school for example, do not go to school that day because your productivity will be low anyway. Alternatively, you could recognize that you are unique. Your desires are your own. If you wait for someone else to do things for you, you may never get them done.
- Everything that went wrong is your fault! Even if you had no direct connection to it, think that it is your fault. You could have done something to change it, so why didn’t you? Take the blame for everything. It makes you a sage! Unfortunately, it makes you tired and stressed too. Despite what you might think, not everything is related to you, and not everything is your responsibility to fix.
- Try to do millions of things at once! Time is short and you have to squeeze as much as you can into every day. Otherwise, you’ll go to bed feeling you have achieved nothing today. You can study full time, run a house perfectly by yourself, get pregnant, open a business, build your dream house on the beach, travel to see your parents overseas, complete the preparation for your art exhibition and prepare for your daughter’s wedding at the same time. Doing many things at the same time is like being “Leonardo De Vinci”. Every superman and superwomen could do all of this in a heartbeat, so you can too! Except that superman and superwoman are fictional characters. It is not true that you can subject your body and brain to so many things each day. Eventually, it will give up. The body is a physical organism and it needs rest. Be kind to yourself.
- Interpret what others say to you as if it means “you are not OK”, “you are not worthy”, “you are not loved”, “you are fake” and “who cares about you?”. It is better to know what people think about you than have high hopes that they love, appreciate and accept you. Because they don’t! They won’t! Prepare for it in every conversation. It will keep you from getting hurt. The constant pain of know you are unloved and unworthy is nothing compared to the pain of one time rejection. Or is it? Long-term, it can be very damaging to believe that you are worthless. It brings other pain with it. Like the pain of never trying or seeing judgment where there is none.
- Don’t get enough sleep! Sleeping is a waste of time and you need to sleep as little as possible. 3-4 hours a day is enough to get your body going. Life belongs to the doers and not the lazy sleepers. If you are a bit tired, use coffee to wake you up, take drugs and energizing drinks. It’ll get you going. Or it will make you sick. Your body will get tired and give in.
- If a situation makes you stressed, get yourself into them over and over again. We can’t hide from certain situations, we must face them. If hanging around certain people makes you stressed, try to spend more time with those people. If not having enough money gets you stressed, continue doing what you are doing until you ge
- Do not mediate! It is a waste of valuable time. What on earth is this stupid idea of making more time by wasting time closing your eyes and pretending not to think? People who say they mediate have nothing better to do!
- Do first, think later! The world belongs to the doers. Every second you spend thinking instead of doing is a waste of time. Thinking is guessing what will happen in the future, and that never works anyways. Everyone justifies their actions after the fact so if it goes wrong, you can do that too! This goes hand in hand with blaming others for your faults, judging and complaining!
- Watch the news! It is very important to keep up to date on the horrors of the world so you don’t feel ignorant. Everything in the news may be bad, with war, crime, corruption but this is the reality of the world and there is no point to ignoring it. Watching the news will help you with complaining, catastrophizing and being negative!
- Wait! Life happens to those who have the patience to wait. If you want something, wait for it to fall into your lap. If you wait long enough, it will happen. If it doesn’t happen, that only means you were not patient enough. All else fails, if things don’t go your way, blame it on your bad luck or on someone else.
- Make fun of people! People like funny people. If you are laughing at someone’s expense you are bonding with all those who are listening. This is the best way to make friends! Unfortunately, this is the best way to make bad friends, who will laugh at you in turn. You attract certain people by your behavior. Treat others like you would like to be treated.
- Diet! Diets are a fantastic way to practice self regulation and prevent yourself from experiencing joy and satisfaction. You don’t deserve the food anyway! Eat food you don’t like and tell yourself that it is good for you. Food is to survive, not to enjoy! The more you regulate yourself, the more deserving you are.
- Be logical and analyze! Logic is the only way to make sense of the world. If it has no logical explanation, it has no meaning! A world with no logic is very chaotic and scary and you can’t afford to live like this. Despise, mock and be critical towards people who can’t explain things. Make sure to analyze everything and have an explanation forr every thought, idea, action or non action that you have. If you don’t have an explanation, keep analyzing or try procrastinating until you make up a good excuse. Ask others to comply as well!
- Rush! Doing things fast is exciting and uplifting. Everything you should do in a day, do it in half a day. It does not have to be good, it only needs to be fast. The adrenaline rush is a great thing for your body!
- Make unrealistic deadlines! People with deadlines are better off than people who do not have deadlines. If you have a goal, make unrealistic deadlines to complete and achieve them. If it makes sense to finish an assignment in two weeks, schedule to finish it in two days, the pressure will make you very efficient! Unless it makes you pass out from frights and stress first. Setting *realistic* deadlines helps you stay on task, and gives you success experiences when you manage to meet them.
- Be sarcastic! Sometimes when you complain, you can chose to verbalize it in the form of sarcasm. Sarcasm makes people think you are witty and smart and very good with words. They will appreciate you very much.
- Lies are better than the truth! You don’t have to tell everyone everything you think. It is better to lie. This will ensure no one can use your words against you. Liars must remember their lies so it forces them to develop a good memory. Remember, when the truth is more painful, lies are there to jump to the rescue.
- Frown! This involves more muscles in the face than smiling and makes people think you are more serious. Look in the mirror and practice frowning. You’ll get better at it over time and it is a fantastic face massage. Just be careful the wind doesn’t change otherwise your face will get stuck like that forever. Everyone will think you’re Mr. or Mrs. Grumpy pants and steer clear of you.
- Punish yourself for every mistake you make! Make sure you have a list of punishments and pick the appropriate one for each occasion. We are averse to punishment and pain so the threat of them makes us learn faster. They are less painful if we give them to ourselves. Do not give yourself any discounts!
- Don’t have hobbies! Hobbies are just a waste of time and energy. Why on earth would you sew anything if you can buy it so cheap? Why would you draw a picture that others can draw much better than you? Hobbies are a waste of time, money and energy. If it is not for work and you don’t make money out of it, don’t waste time on it.
- Be competitive! If there is a competition, you must win it at all costs! You must give yourself fully to the competition and make sure you win. Do not compromise on coming second. You are only as good as your winnings. If you don’t win it means you are not good enough. It means there are others who are better than you and this puts you in a bad light. If you know for sure
- Don’t express your feelings! Feelings are the source of all bad things and you can’t take the risk of expressing them (especially not the bad ones). If you express them, they come up to the surface again. You don’t want to hear yourself saying that you are feeling bad, sad and disappointed. Bottle it up. It will go away eventually.
- To do list are for people with a bad memory! You don’t need a to do list, you can do all of it in your head. Only people with bad memory need to do lists. Writing down is inferior anyway and when you keep everything in your head, you don’t need to carry a list with you to remind you what to do. The more you keep in your head, the better memory you have and the more you achieve!
- Stay indoors at all times! Your house is your fortress and you are only safe when you are inside your home. The outdoors are very dangerous. There are people outside, a cancerous sun, unpredictable weather and accidents. You can shop online, exercise in the comfort of your own home. There is no need to go outside. Even the air is not fresh. It is polluted and poisonous so if you go outside, never take deep breaths to avoid the risk of infection.
- Never say “no” if someone asks you to do anything. You will get into trouble and make people think that you are selfish and unkind. If you say “no”, people won’t want to be your friend. If you are asked to do something you are not comfortable with it, forget your values and rules and do it anyway. Otherwise you will lose other people’s love and attention.
- Avoid intimacy! It is very hard to be intimate. It requires a lot of effort and risk, like sharing your feelings, like being vulnerable. You’ll get nothing out of it anyway. It will bring you more heartache than pleasure. Even sex is not as rewarding as people say it is. Getting yourself into a sexual relationship will increase the risk of rejection. Why would you take that risk?
- Do everything at the last minute! If you do things on time, you take the risk that things will change and all your hard work was for nothing. Leave everything to the last minute because it gives you more time to collect information. Doing things at the last minute gives you more flexibility and is a better use of your time. You do things better at the last minute anyways! If you need to submit something, do it a second before the deadline. If you need to return a book to the library, do it the last minute before they close the library, just in case!
- Never delegate! If there is something that needs to be done, do it by yourself. If you give something to other people do to, you always end up doing it yourself and even have to fix what others have done. You can’t trust others to do things your way and if you delegate, you’ll have to compromise your perfectionism!
- Turn every conversation into small talk! Never get into a serious and meaningful conversation. There is no point anyway. Talk about things that are unimportant and without feelings. You can’t change people anyway and you can’t take the risk.
- Hurt yourself! If you hurt yourself, others will pay attention to you. It will increase your feelings of worthlessness. If you hurt yourself, it will ensure others will never hurt you ever again because they will feel sorry for you. If others feel sorry for you, it will guarantee they will do anything you want.
Stress is the #1 killer in our society today. As much as there are happiness pills, there are stress pills. Do you notice yourself in the statements above? Make a conscious decision to focus on happiness and get rid of your causes of stress.
Be happy,
Ronit
This post is part of the series The Stress Pill:
- The Stress Pill: Seeing Shadows of Lions
- The Stress Pill: 10 Things that Increase Your Stress
- The Stress Pill: 30 More Stressors
- The Stress Pill: The Final 30 Causes of Stress
