ASSESSMENT

STRESS: What is it?
Stress is usually regarded as a negative term, something associated with experiencing unpleasant levels of tension and discomfort which persists and detracts from our quality of living. We commonly regard stress as something that “happens to us”. But we were not born stressed. The world doesn’t “do” stress to us. We succumb to it.
As long as we continue to think of stress as something that just “happens to us”, we will never consider prevention. But stress prevention is something that we can “learn” just by shifting our perceptions and responses to what is happening. An understanding of what causes stress and using it as a tool to shift our perceptions can lead to our ability to prevent stress from happening. This article is about these tools of prevention.

EMOTIONS AND MOODS:

Why is stress an important consideration in the world?

Stress has a definite impact on emotions. When a person perceives their environment, constant comparison is being made to one’s “ideal” world and what is actually happening to them. If it doesn’t match up, then one may react to the perception negatively with anger or resentment. Therefore, stress produces an emotion by the mere fact that we are interpreting the situation and responding to it.

The biggest effect that stress may have is in the long term. It can, in time, affect moods such as depression or apathy. One can easily deduce how this can negatively impact our daily lives. This is why stress is an important consideration in our life. With emotions being a precursor to actions, then one can see how important it is to prevent stress which affects the emotions, which controls the actions and ultimately the happiness and productivity of society as a whole.

LANGUAGE:

While stress is very closely associated with emotions and bodily sensations, stress is fundamentally linguistic. This is because it always involves an “assessment” by us or an interpretation of the situation we are in.

Making an assessment involves our own “silent conversation”. So, actually stress is not a property of the situation we observe—it does not exist “out there” with a life of its own. It is our interpretation of
our silent conversation concerning what’s out there. That is what we respond to. We don’t actually respond to the stress itself. We respond to the interpretation of the stress.

What is this silent conversation?

First, in making an assessment, we have made a comparison between our ideal world and what has happened. Our conversation with our self has interpreted this as “not how things should be”.
Second, as we perceive this as stressful, we also have a conversation with our self as to how we will respond.

LINGUISTIC TOOLS:

Lets look at society as a whole a little closer—what is it all about?

You may say making money, being successful, delivering a product or service, etc. But what allows all these things to happen?

Society is all about getting things done—interdependent relationships. By people working together, society can fulfill it’s mission of trading goods and services, making money, being successful, etc. Through relationships and how people relate to one another are things accomplished and determines the wealth and abundance of a society.

The key to relationships and how people relate to one another involves language and conversation. In the same way that a carpenter uses tools to create something, a reality, tools can be used in language to create a unique reality as well. The tools used in linguistics are listening and speaking.

A key tool in the assessment process is listening. Listening is an active process in which we form an interpretation of events and circumstances in which we find ourselves. This can either be in a conversation with ourself or with someone else.

Listening directs how we respond. Listening is a very important aspect of the communication process. Some people view listening as a “passive” process. But on the contrary, listening is a very active process because what one is doing while one is listening determines one’s “perception” of the whole content of the situation or conversation. The whole point of listening is to be able to respond with an “assessment”.

By using one’s listening skills and reviewing the data, one is more prepared to respond with an assessment that is fair and reasonable. In this context, the assessment or response that is given will have value and sincerity. Value and sincerity builds trust and trust is the glue that holds relationships together. When we trust someone, we are assessing their sincerity, reliability and competence. Trusting someone always involves one of these assessments. Therefore, one can observe in human relationships how our assessments can have a tremendous impact in how we are perceived and the level of trust that is imparted.

EMOTIONAL ASSESSMENTS:

There are really only two basic emotions in life. They are fear and love…complete polar opposites. When one looks closely at all the ranges of human emotion, one can see that they all can be attributed to either fear or love, one or the other.

Being that emotions are precursors to action, it is important to understand from which base we operate. Our assessment of the situation will determine that base and which emotion will be elicited—fear or love. The resulting action is determined by the emotion. Fear is contracting, negative, closing in. Love is expanding, positive, reaching out.

We all operate from a base of one or the other from time to time. Can you feel when you are operating from a base of fear? Can you also feel when you are operating from a base of love and how different the resulting emotion and actions are.

If fear is the base of assessment, then anger and resentment can follow as the emotional spinoff and actions resulting in helplessness and powerlessness can occur which in turn may lead to moods involving depression and apathy. Therefore the resulting environment is in no way impacted or the situation improved. The cycle simply keeps repeating itself.

If one was to move from a paradigm of operating from a base of fear and shift to one of operating from a base of love, the cycle can be broken through actions of power and assertiveness. This gives very important feedback into the environment which results in feelings of excitement and involvement. The energy behind this is the momentum of action that breaks the inertia of the powerless state of fear, thus breaking the stress cycle.

This is the challenge in assessments—being able to see the difference and “choosing” a response that is expanding, positive and reaching out and a response that builds trust. The emotion that reaches out to people that is positive and affirming is the emotion from which trust can be formed and relationships cemented. In operating this way, one’s sphere of influence will naturally expand, reach out and validate all those within reach. This is the secret to breaking the stress cycle.
So, the next time you feel “stressed” out, think about the fear you are creating behind it and choose to except love instead.