I noticed something about the conversations I was having with my clients last week. I was repeatedly using a word that, until recent weeks, I don’t think I used all that much.
Unprecedented.
The word means “never done or known before.”
On one hand, there are a lot of specific things I am experiencing for the first time.
For example:
This is the first global pandemic I have been through in my lifetime
According to the Wall Street Journal on April 16, 2020, over 22 million people sought unemployment benefits
People are wearing masks at the grocery store
It is hard to purchase paper towels and toilet paper
A drop of 2997 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
I can’t fly to Peoria and have coffee with my mom at her kitchen table
I can’t fly to Ohio and hug my two grandbabies!
All of these seemingly unprecedented events were starting to cause me some stress. I could feel it all building. As I would think about the pandemic and the many people dying, I get a little stressed because I don’t want to get sick and die. I go to the grocery store and see all the people wearing masks and I can not buy paper towels and I get a little stressed. When I read the news at night, half of the stock market pundits say the market is going to recover and the other half say it is going back down. This uncertainty adds stress. I can see my two precious granddaughters on FaceTime, but I cannot hug them…wanna talk about stress?!
Pretty soon, I can feel all of this stress adding up. I can actually start to feel the weight of it all. I think it is starting to affect my mental game, my positive attitude, my overall optimism.
Then it hit me like a blinding flash of light, what I know about stress is killing me.
That last statement might seem a little odd, but hang with me. I want to unpack it with you.
Henry Thompson, in his book, The Stress Effect, draws this conclusion, “When stress increases, cognitive and emotional intelligence are compromised. Perception changes and, in many cases, become less accurate and more biased.” When complexity increases and our control decreases we do not see things as they really are and we mentally run to our familiar comfort zones.
And if that is not enough the Mayo Clinic cites body, mood, and behavioral effects like headache, anxiety, and overeating, along with stomach upset, feeling overwhelmed, and exercising less.
Like you, the last two paragraphs were not new information for me. I know that stress affects my decision making and I know it makes me anxious and causes me to feel overwhelmed at times. I also know that if I let myself slip, I will take on other unhealthy behaviors like overeating and sleep difficulties.
What I know about stress is indeed killing me.
As I was feeling the weight of all this stress, I came to realize that I needed a very different response. So, in my journaling this morning, I spent some time just writing and trying to figure out all this seemingly unprecedented stuff, and the stress it was causing me.
Out of nowhere, another blinding flash of light: is this event that we are experiencing really unprecedented?
Just Hear Me Out
At first glance when thinking about the impact of Covid-19, there might be an argument for describing it with the word “unprecedented.”
I don’t ever remember not being able to go out and have dinner in a restaurant. Certainly, that has never happened before in my life. From my very first memories as a kid growing up I could go into Steak and Shake with my Aunt Betty and order a fried egg sandwich on white bread and those classic french fries.
But as I was thinking about this micro event of dining in at Steak and Shake back in the 1960’s, it really isn’t the dining in the restaurant, but more about my ability to have control to do what I want, when I want.
Yet none of us always gets to do what we want, when we want.
Is this unprecedented feeling I am having really all that unprecedented? Or is it a lack of control I am experiencing in the moment?
I have been pretty open in this column, and in my conversations with my clients, and even on the Facebook Watch Parties (sign up for my next one here) I have been hosting about how I am starting my day. In fact, just yesterday I was on a coaching call and a client said to me, “So, Scott, tell me how you are starting your day?”
Here is what I told him:
I am walking the dog
I am exercising
I am having coffee and reading my Bible
I am spending some time in quiet reflection and meditation
I then go into my office and start working
Then I told him I am really digging this routine. One thing I did have to change was looking at the news. I open the Newsfeed on my iPhone and skim the headlines to see if there is something new or breakthrough that happened overnight. Then I close the app. I don’t want to infect my day with a bunch of news I already know is bad.
Why am I telling you all this, you might be asking?
The Point
Today I am in my morning routine and reading my Bible and one of the verses in the study I am doing is Ecclesiastes 1:9 which reads, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
I really had to stop dead in my tracks.
How could something be unprecedented and yet there be nothing new under the sun?
While the microcosm of what we are all experiencing right now might be new, the lack of control we are experiencing certainly is not.
The inability to control our situations or our circumstances is not new. For centuries, people have had to adapt and change because of what is going on around them. And for centuries, these events have been stressful.
What I am asking myself is, “Do I have to succumb to the stress of the situation?”
What I know about stress is killing me, and if I don’t change something, the stress just might do me in.
I will have a free tool for you to download after my Facebook WatchParty event this Thursday at noon Eastern time. I hope you will be able to join me! I have a very special guest who will join me to help us continue this discussion around stress. See you Thursday!