Sunday, March 17, 2013

EXCERPTS FROM "LIVING WITH STRESS" CHAPTER 2

Our personality [...] is an interplay of forces [...]


We tend to be blind to rather obvious contradictions within ourselves. [...] We would actually prefer to picture ourselves as a "whole" individual, free of fissures, rather than as a fragmented or compartmentalized creature.


Depending on our personality type, we create an artificial harmony that collapses at the first gust of wind.


[...] Attempts at coping fight back. They generate diverse fears, deplete our energy, and fill us with hopelessness, until we find ourselves entangled in a cobweb leading to further stress.


We enter into commitments and get involved in contradictions that generate stress without our becoming wiser to its sources.


Keep asking yourself, WHAT DO I REALLY WANT? WHY? The "why" is not a minor matter. By pulling at the loose end of the thread of "why's" you may discover that you got the answer to the first question wrong.


Unless trained otherwise, we respond to stress on the basis of what our personality dictates. While other issues in our lives become tinged by [...], when it comes to stress, our personality traits sit at the wheel.


Personality types and the ways in which each of them addresses exogenously induced stress can be found in this chapter.

15 comments:

  1. Thoroughly enjoyed your marvelous excerpt, Marta - thank you so much for sharing it.

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    1. Thank you for reading it, PJ. An accolade from you is no small thing :)

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  2. Mucho gracias for a thought-provoking post. I'd like to have it as a copy to refer back to whenever I feel I'm lsongthe battle.

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    1. Dear Micki, thanks for your comment. You will never lose the battle. You're made of the stuff of winners against adversity!

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  4. Marta...

    How ironic this post...at a time when I just want to lie down and sleep away the blues. Tired of fighting the slamming doors, and the stress of it all is exactly as you said, "Unless trained otherwise, we respond to stress on the basis of what our personality dictates."

    My personality is strong, always has been. But, even strong people get tired. Glad I read this lovely post...and re-subscribed so I'll get the next!

    Love and hugs,
    Taylor

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  5. Dearest Taylor,
    Thanks for reading and taking the trouble to re-subscribe. It's not about strong or weak, but about how conflict affects us. Perhaps you need the whole chapter...
    Get in touch with me and, in the meantime, don't give in!
    Love and hugs back,
    Marta

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  6. Marta,

    Thanks for sharing this profound morsel. It makes me hungry for more.

    James

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    1. Dear James, more is coming next week. Thank you so much for reading. You know how highly I value your opinion.

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  7. My Dear Sister,

    This is so true. I don't know how many times I have been forced to ask myself Why instead of What. It is so easy to put the What in our lives first because then we can placed the responsibility for our stress on others without examining ourselves.

    However, looking deeply into oneself takes courage because it is frightening. Know yourself aren't two words to play with. They are dangerous words because you come in contact with the dark side of you which promotes the stress that you go through. But, once we decide to face that Why hidden beneath some dark stone that has glued itself to our inner consciousness we are on the road to relieving ourselves of the stress we face. It sounds complicated but it is not. It is easy once we begin to face the why and it will get easier along the way because we are no longer in bondage to the stress factors outside of our lives.

    I love these chapters and look forward to the continuance.

    Ciao,
    Patti

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    1. Dearest Patti,
      I wish I could rewrite the book and quote you. Your profound wisdom always enriches other people's contents. I thank you for that and for reading me.
      More to come...

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    2. Sis,

      i enjoy reading what you write because i grow an inch or two every time. Your book on stress is forcing me to deal with my own reality and re-examine the inner priorities in my own life and ask myself, am I living the why or the what in life. The why in life brings the inner growth and in my opinion, inner growth and maturity separates itself from theory of what we think, when we begin to put it into practice. I don't know who said it exactly, but I believe it was Alfred Lord Tennyson that said, "I am a sum of all the experiences that I have had with people around me and these keep me walking towards the light." These words are my paraphrase of what he said. If this is true then no one person is an entity unto himself and therefore when we live only for self, we are in continuous stress because we are fighting against our own inner nature.
      I wish you a most pleasant Friday evening, Sis.
      Shalom.

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  8. Dear Patti, your words couldn't be truer. Self-centeredness is not the only stressor, but it ranks high on the list. The struggle I'm facing here is that lots of people are staying away from this subject on the grounds that "it's not their problem." Let's suppose for a moment that's true -which I don't believe. Aren't they interested in helping others? One of the reviewers of this book wrote something like this: "Do yourself a favor. Buy this book and save a life." I think this summarizes perfectly the connection between the self, stress, and caring about others.

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    1. Dear Sis,

      That reviewer has a very keen eye. I couldn't agree more. Not only would you be doing yourself favor by reading the book to save a life, but the most important life that you would save is your own.

      As for the famous sentence, "it's not their problem" I hear this often. We are living in times where there is much affluence in our world, yet people are still dying from lack of food and clothing; people have an abundance of things in some parts of the world, two or three cars, houses, some people go on vacation three or four times a year, yet they are the unhappiest people in the world. Gambling casinos are popping up all over the world and lots of people that have only one cent will speculate to get rich, thinking that there problems will be over. We perpetuate a world of falseness where the saviour of our souls is the mighty currency that can buy all things. That currency regardless of which currency it is, will never be able to satisfy the cry of the soul. We refuse to focus on the roots of the problem and those roots are not outside of ourselves, they are within us.

      Let me throw in one of my favorite parables from Matthew 15, verses 16-20. The disciples are confused because of what Jesus said to the Pharisees about honor and they went to him with a question. At the end in verses 16 to 20 Jesus said to them, Are you still so dull? Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body. But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean, but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean.

      So is it with many people today. We think the problem is outside of us and we are busy grabbing for what we perceive as our part. With this I will stop. Maybe one of these days we can discuss this privately. I would love to.

      Have a great week Sis.

      Shalom,
      Patti

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  9. Dearest Sis, thanks for your wise words. I love your quote from Matthew, and am marveled, once again, at how you add momentum to what you read. Believe me when I tell you I've been everywhere in regard to what I discuss in this and the other books in the series. I do rely on my academic knowledge, but it would mean little without my own suffering translated into experience. You know we can talk privately whenever you like. That's what Skype is for!
    A great week to you too!

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