Why is our life filled with so much of Anxiety and Stress these days? Where are we going wrong? When I looked deep in to it, I could trace one of the reason to be connected to our childhood habit. I hope that understanding it will help overcome it.
Childhood: Relaxation tied to completion
As a child I never worried about how much can I do today. There were no limits set on anything. Just jumped in and started doing it. Continued doing it till I can. Considering the fact there were always limited things I did, Could always finish them, most of them. Had the satisfaction of completing everything before calling it a day and slipping myself in to relaxing.
Leeser responsibilities as well. There were not many tasks that I did not like. Even sometime when I skipped doing something I did not like, the impact was not of any serious consequence. Worst was getting punished for not doing homework or even worst was getting lower grades or failing in some examination. Nothing beyond that which really scared me. Hence many times afforded to complete all the tasks before relaxing.
Completed the homework for today nothing more to do, start relaxing. Studied hard and completed examinations. Here comes Summer vacations or semester breaks. Nothing more to do. So now relax. So relaxation almost always got associated with when you had nothing more to do or you completed most of what you had do. This lead to sort of reinforcement of concept that finish everything before you relax.
Adulthood: Completion is mirage
It was not always possible to complete everything everyday. There were only very few days the satisfaction of completing most was achieved. It ended up restricting the real sense of relaxation to only those days. Also some of tasks if not performed in time, had bad consequences. Hence the choice of not being able to perform them reduced. Total time I had still remained to same 24 hours. This lead to developing the constant anxiety and stress. Constant worry about things to do became part of life.
It started affecting the days even when I was off from work or even when I am on my vacation. Top it up, today's technology enables you to carry your work and worries wherever you go.
Don't Procrastinate your Relaxation and Happiness
It took me some effort to realize that one cannot tie the relaxation to completion. Although to an extent its positive but when overdone, it has negative impact on the performance.
Planning and prioritization helps significantly and cannot be ignored. Set reasonable goals and find happiness and satisfaction in achieving them. How to go about doing planning and prioritizing right there is quite bit of help out there. Seek it.
We are all warriors who have to fight lifelong battles. Hence need to pick the right battles and learn the art of relaxing and being happy even in the battlefield. Good luck fighting anxiety and stress.
Childhood: Relaxation tied to completion
As a child I never worried about how much can I do today. There were no limits set on anything. Just jumped in and started doing it. Continued doing it till I can. Considering the fact there were always limited things I did, Could always finish them, most of them. Had the satisfaction of completing everything before calling it a day and slipping myself in to relaxing.
Leeser responsibilities as well. There were not many tasks that I did not like. Even sometime when I skipped doing something I did not like, the impact was not of any serious consequence. Worst was getting punished for not doing homework or even worst was getting lower grades or failing in some examination. Nothing beyond that which really scared me. Hence many times afforded to complete all the tasks before relaxing.
Completed the homework for today nothing more to do, start relaxing. Studied hard and completed examinations. Here comes Summer vacations or semester breaks. Nothing more to do. So now relax. So relaxation almost always got associated with when you had nothing more to do or you completed most of what you had do. This lead to sort of reinforcement of concept that finish everything before you relax.
Adulthood: Completion is mirage
As I grew up to the adulthood and started growing in terms of responsibilities, number of tasks that needs to be performed kept on increasing. In fact I was always on lookout for adding more tasks in order to grow professionally as well as personally.
It was not always possible to complete everything everyday. There were only very few days the satisfaction of completing most was achieved. It ended up restricting the real sense of relaxation to only those days. Also some of tasks if not performed in time, had bad consequences. Hence the choice of not being able to perform them reduced. Total time I had still remained to same 24 hours. This lead to developing the constant anxiety and stress. Constant worry about things to do became part of life.
It started affecting the days even when I was off from work or even when I am on my vacation. Top it up, today's technology enables you to carry your work and worries wherever you go.
Don't Procrastinate your Relaxation and Happiness
It took me some effort to realize that one cannot tie the relaxation to completion. Although to an extent its positive but when overdone, it has negative impact on the performance.
Planning and prioritization helps significantly and cannot be ignored. Set reasonable goals and find happiness and satisfaction in achieving them. How to go about doing planning and prioritizing right there is quite bit of help out there. Seek it.
We are all warriors who have to fight lifelong battles. Hence need to pick the right battles and learn the art of relaxing and being happy even in the battlefield. Good luck fighting anxiety and stress.
