Stressed Out: My Stress Blueprint

Today I’m going to share with you about why you get stressed out.

We all have a blueprint for stress. This blueprint drives how you react to stress. It’s what you’ve learnt about stress up to this point in your life. It’s developed over time and was influenced by those around you as you grew up. 

Most blueprints we have, such as work, financial, marriage, and driving have become so ingrained in us that we don’t give them much thought. Our stress blueprint is the same way. When we experience stress, we automatically react how we always have. There’s nothing wrong with this, unless how you’re automatically reacting isn’t working for you any longer. 

Your stress blueprint is your automatic reaction to stress, or your stress programming. And there’s a formula to this programming:

Thoughts lead to feelings > Feelings lead to actions > Actions lead to results

Thoughts Lead to Feeling

Have you ever found yourself thinking about a memory and without even realizing it, you’re feeling anxious, worried, sad, happy, etc. I can close my eyes and think back to when I passed my drivers test and got my license. A smile actually comes to my face when I’m thinking about it as I was so freaking excited at the time. It makes me happy thinking about it to this day.

This same process happens in the present. Something happens to you and a thought will pop into your head about it. Almost simultaneously, you’ll have a feeling about this thought.

For example, I woke up this morning and looked out the window to see that it was raining. The thought that popped into my head right away was “really, rain again”. And the feeling I felt was disappointed. I mean it is considered the rainy season right now where I live and we do average 1677mm or 66 inches of rainfall each year, but I’m often optimistic that it won’t rain when it’s predicted to rain.

Feelings Lead to Actions

So we’re walking around, doing our usual daily things and we’re continually experiencing all these feelings. This is normal. Sometimes we’re aware of these feelings and other times we might be on autopilot and just powering through our to-do list (if you fall into this latter category, check out this post here). Believe it or not, these feelings can dictate our decisions, or the actions we take.

Let’s continue with my example from above. I woke up this morning, looked out my window to see that it was raining and felt disappointed. What decision did I make? Today I decided to dress warmly, throw on my raincoat and boots, grab an umbrella and take the kids to the zoo. Other days, I throw on comfy clothes and grab a good book and drink a pot of coffee (these are both awesome choices in my opinion).

But you can see the two different decisions, or actions I could take based on my feeling of the rain. 

Actions lead to Results

We make so many decisions each day, most of which are automatic. This means that we aren’t necessarily aware of all the decisions we make. Have you ever walked away after dinner and couldn’t remember if you turned the stove off?

So here’s the kicker, if you find yourself unhappy with something you're doing or not doing, it’s a result of a decision you made (or didn’t make as not making a decision is actually a decision). 

With my above example, if I chose to get into comfy clothes, grab a good book and stay home all day, I can’t be upset with the result of not going to the zoo because I didn’t take action that would lead me to go to the zoo today.

Now What

As I mentioned before, when we experience stress, we automatically react how we always have. There’s nothing wrong with this, unless how you’re automatically reacting isn’t giving you the result you’re happy with. 

If you want to change how you react to stress, you must change how you think about stress. If your stress has become too much for too long, my eBook "A Way Out of Burnout" offers simple and practical steps so you can start your burnout recovery today.

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