What do you hate? Pickles? Traffic jams? Rainy days? Think hard and come up with a list. I bet it’s pretty long. First, narrow it down to ten. Now, pick your top one. The one that makes you grind your teeth. The one that sounds like nails on a chalkboard for ten minutes straight. Remember that.
Switch gears now. Now, think of your most dearest and trusted person. The one you can count thorough thick and thin: the late night talks, burning off steam through sports, or eating ice cream from the carton. Have this person in mind?
Now, blend these images together. What do you get? You doing the one thing that you loath all the while it’s hurting the person you hold dearest. But you still do it, every day and every moment.
That’s stress.
When looking the definition up in the dictionary, stress is describe as:
“a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.
Similar: strain, pressure, tension, worry, anxiety”
I don’t know about you but that’s something I want to avoid. I haven’t met many people who actually enjoy stress. I’m not talking about the stress that helps you perform better, I’m talking about the negatives stress that eats at you, eats at your health, happiness, relationships, and so much more.
Personally, I know much more than I would want about stress. People kept tell me I was going to get an ulcer with my stress. I kept replying, “if it hasn’t happened by now it won’t happen!” To this day, I haven’t had an ulcer. Instead, I’ve been dealing with something worse.
I had to spend a month eating plain chicken, peanut butter bread, and carrots, because that was the only thing that didn’t make my stomach unbelievably hurt.* Within that month, I lost twelve pounds on a body frame that shouldn’t have lost anymore due to the small bowel resection six months prior. I ended up with a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy to tell me: back off the stress. The lining of my stomach had started to erode and the amount of acid I had is changing the cells in my small intestine.
I’ve been dealing with this for over five months now and I’m paying a terrible price for stress, and it still could be much worse.
It’s not if, it’s when stress kills you.
So remember this: if you’re letting stress get the best of you, you are doing something you hate making you feel horrible. Meanwhile it’s killing you, and it’s hurting the dearest people in your life.
Can you tell me stress is really worth the price of crushing the ones you love?
Keeping the perspective,
Lauren
*If you’ve ever had a small bowel resection, you’ll know the pain I’m talking about. For those who haven’t be thankful, trust me. It’s when your small intestine ties a knot around itself and doesn’t let anything pass through. It’s life threatening, and the pain is so intense not even medicine 4x stronger than morphine can knock it out.
You. Are. Beautiful. 
Leave a comment