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Stress
Stress is one of the greatest creators of energy that we have. Stress not only creates energy, but it also creates urgency. The secret of its management is not avoidance, but the balancing of internal and external stress. Stress generally comes from the outside. A situation develops creating internal pressure, but the cause is external. If you balance the internal pressure with the external pressure, you can withstand tremendous loads. It is the imbalance that hurts you. For example, the farther a submarine descends, the higher the pressure is increased on the inside to keep it from collapsing externally. If you over-pressurize internally, then the submarine explodes. Underpressurizing creates an implosion. Our lives are the same way.
The first step toward healthy stress is defining the problem. One of the best definitions of "problem" that I know is: something I can do something about. If I can’t do anything about it, it is not my problem. It doesn’t become a problem until I can do something about it. If I can’t do anything, it is a fact of life. Many people call problems things that aren’t problems at all ---- they are facts of life. They can do nothing about them. I have to constantly be able to recognize facts of life, accept them, live with them, and not consider them problems. Healthy stress results from the definition of the problem.
