From Stress to Contentment

“Less is more, more is less
        The lesson is to lessen stress”
– David Schaeffer

Is there any greater threat to productivity than stress? Is there any greater threat to relationships, to potential, to a productive future, than stress?

No matter how gifted, talented, educated or experienced we may be, stress can cripple us quickly and for a long time.

My father was a World War 2 fighter pilot, serving with the RAAF in Northern Africa. In 1942 he suffered a major nervous breakdown when he saw a close friend shot and killed as he was taking off when their airstrip came under enemy attack. Dad watched on helplessly and reflected in his war diary that this event was the cause of his emotional damage. And no doubt it could have been a reason all on its own. 

But on closer inspection, fighter pilots were under extreme stress all the time, week after week, month after month. At some periods during the war, the average life expectancy for a fighter pilot shrank to fifteen minutes. Sometimes it stretched out to three or four weeks.

Stress accumulated in his body and mind and one day he devastatingly experienced the straw that “broke the camels back.”

Here are a few things we need to know about stress:

• It is described as the slow killer.
• It accumulates over time, sometimes over a long time.
• The body pays for every stressful experience by growing a little older.
• Reducing stress temporarily can occur quickly; a holiday, an injection, a bottle of pills. Reducing it permanently will take longer and involves learning to live a new way with new life skills.
• No-one fulfills their potential in isolation, and isolation is a great precursor to stress.
• When putting life together or back together, we should put all of life together at the same time rather than repair the piece that broke last.
• High workloads need not mean high stress. To lower our stress levels we must learn how our minds were designed to be used and cooperate with them rather than force them to operate unnaturally.