Managing expectations doesn’t make a possible trauma any less traumatic.
Bracing myself for pain wouldn’t make the pain less painful. And I do that all the time. I manage my joy. I set barriers so I won’t get hurt…All of a sudden it sounded so crazy to me. How we put up these walls, how we guard ourselves against joy because of possible pain. When in reality, we can’t protect ourselves against it. It’s coming whether we’re prepared or not.
And that’s how I feel about stress these days. Whether someone’s mad at me, disappointed, going to fire me, whatever, isn’t my problem. They’re going to feel the way they feel whether I worry about it or not.
stress is a choice
One that I would like to not choose! Working on it. It’s a long, hard process for me to let worries go. I relate to what Oliver Burkeman pointed out about worry – that “the fuel behind worry is the internal demand to know, in advance, that things will turn out fine.” I have to release my fears of the future.
