Western Red Cedar wrote: ↑Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:51 pm
I think I understand where you are coming from, but ignoring stress is a bad idea. It will lead to mental and physical breakdowns. It sounds to me like what you are actually doing is addressing your stressors from a rational perspective and reframing your view of of the external environment. This is a valuable skill and you should keep practicing it. It is a fundamental tenet of stoicism.
It is worth noting that a lot of people are dealing with work related stress that is far beyond a late TPS report. Some people have highly toxic work environments with passive aggressive (or straight up aggressive) managers and coworkers. In my last job I had a death threat, which was added to the list of other colleagues who received those. It wasn't unusual for someone to scream at me or my coworkers for implementing local laws and regulations. That job was stressful as fuck and I'm glad I got out when I did.
Stress often results from working on something that is very challenging while you have low skills (see Mihaly csikszentmihalyi on flow and worker productivity). When you add familial/monetary obligations into that equation it quickly becomes a pressure cooker.
We are also inundated with news and negative messaging through the internet in modern times. Combine that with increased social isolation, and it begins to explain why stress/anxiety/depression are at record levels for teens (see Johaan Hari's books or Ted Talks).
What would our ancestors think if the sky was filled with smoke and you couldn't see the sun for months at a time every year?
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One of the issues with chronic stress is that most people aren't completing their stress cycles. When someone was running rom a predator the fact that they ran and escaped acted as a natural release valve. They completed that stress cycle. We don't do that often with modern stressors. We bottle it up instead. There are different ways to complete the stress cycle, but working out/exercise is my favorite. Even better if it is in nature.
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@Take2 - My old boss used to be a pretty avid rock climber. He mentioned to me that his climbing experiences helped keep work-related stressors in perspective.
Financial self-imposed stress from one's own decisions but easily diffused with a low consumption lifestyle.
At work, try to become and communicate to all those around me that I am a Cane toad. Harmless, docile. easy to interact with but if anyone even tries to lick me, they will die. Easy to kill me but any mild, even exploratory attack, will result in death. Still a "brown belt" in this regard as I don't know how to temper my power against those who even mildly attack at work and doubt (even if possible) will ever develop this skill. Don't get many Christmas cards from collogues, but this is not the purpose of work.
This is much easier to do in a one-party consent state and right to work state as any supervisor who chooses to attack can (will) usually be also fired (a few times in my career, but don't list this on my resume although a great skill to have). Always have some designation that will provide some income and have no problem taking hobby jobs after some terrible corporate work experience.
My current situation, as a simple analogy, is I'm a cog in a Bernie Madoff like fraud machine and refused to mail out fraudulent statements once realizing they were fake. Supervisors have used "Do X or else", several times and my response is "put it in writing, fire me or leave me alone". I've been offered a settlement, reassigned to mop the floors and won't be mailing out fraudulent statements for the remainder of my time with this employer (end of 2022). Will explore whistle-blower complaints, but quite difficult to prove this fraud (see Madoff SEC complaints). This is only the second time I've been around fraud and luckily both occurrences when work was more for an activity than something for income (low SWR). Had exposure to fraud happened early in my career (high SWR), might have a different perspective. Terrible working environment and several colleagues are experiencing major life altering stress, but I just hop along and cash my checks. WFH definitely helps in this regard as their other's financial related stress does not wash off on me as this can happen.
Last review at current fraud organization was filled with fraud, assume to garner some kind of over-reaction to justify firing, my response was "I disagree. Does this mean I can skip the team building exercises?". So I am currently exposed to what most would perceive as a terrible work environment but doesn't create stress more than a traffic jam.
Considering the average life expectancy was in the 20's-30's, a few hundred years ago, ancestors would gladly swap some pollution from carbon for the benefits they provide. Article mixes mean and median but provides the point (median age is what one would like to know). The ancestors had reason to stress as they were exposed to death regularly, while modern humans create stress because we are not exposed to real stress.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevit ... ry-2224054
Rule of law should protect one from death threats. I've had co-workers, supervisors and relatives exposed to death threats and all rely on the law to defuse these situations, but they are stressful, but fleeting.