Stress is a part of life, but how we respond to it can make all the difference. Rather than considering stress as good or bad, you can imagine it as something that flows through you.
A "stress bucket" is a helpful mental model for stress. Imagine a bucket underneath a stream of water. The water flowing into the bucket is your stress. If the bucket overflows, you risk burnout and anxiety. However, if you add water taps to the bucket to let out water (i.e., stress), you can handle the stress in the bucket. The water taps are stress coping strategies, like resting, connecting with friends, exercising, or pursuing a hobby. Water taps can also be delegating and/or eliminating tasks altogether.
Let's put this mental model into action:
When you stop judging stress and start tending to it, you can shift from feeling stuck to feeling steady. You don’t need to empty the whole bucket. You just need to find a tap to find relief. You've got this.
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl offers a timeless insight on stress response:
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
from Man's Search for Meaning
Self-help author, Brianna Wiest, explains how moving through uncomfortable feelings is what allows us to return to happiness:
Happiness is not something you can chase. It is something you have to allow. This likely will come as a surprise to many people, as the world is so adamant about everything from positive psychology to motivational Pinterest boards. But happiness is not something you can coach yourself into. Happiness is your natural state. That means you will return to it on your own if you allow the other feelings you want to experience to come up, be felt, be processed, and not resisted. The less you resist your unhappiness, the happier you will be. It is often just trying too hard to feel one certain way that sets us up for failure.
from The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
What taps will you add to your stress bucket this weekend?
Learn more about responding to stress in the Managing Stress Journey in the Moment for Parents app.