<p><em>If our thoughts are right, our actions would be right and would benefit all<br><strong>By Achal Bhagat</strong></em><br><br>Perhaps a day in the life of Janki Vallabh, Peter Fowler, Lynn Burke, Abid Latif, Sudip Rao, Rao’s wife is no different than a day in your life. The word stress looms large.<br><br>No, stress is not some demon around the corner. Stress runs parallel to all that we do in our life. There is stress in being the director HR, there is stress in being a daughter to a demanding mother and there is stress in being an IT expert in India. There is perhaps stress in being Genelia distributing passes for the Shankar Mahadevan show as there is in being Shankar Mahadevan being ‘breathless’.<br><br>One person’s experience of stress has a ripple effect on all others in the interaction. An airline gets rated low on safety; it is stressful for the communication manager of that company and for Sudip Rao’s daughter whose father cannot drop her to school.<br><br>It is not the situation that is stressful. It is the way we think that makes it stressful. So, one of Janki’s stressful situation: Trip to Auckland cancelled. The way of thinking: Predominance of ‘shoulds’. “I should be able to replace the session with a few 90-minute sessions.” “I should ensure the quality of these sessions is better than the face-to-face session.” “I should use the saved travel time to brainstorm the foods division’s workshop.” “I should also use this time to ensure that I am able to squeeze in getting the passes for the Shankar Mahadevan show.”<br><br>I could go on with the list of Janki’s ‘shoulds’. Janki’s ‘shoulds’ are tiresome for her. Here is the one that makes it worse for her, “I am tired but I should only take a 10-minute curl on the mauve sofa.” My experience is that our shoulds are addictive. We crave for them. Our ‘shoulds’, if not heeded to, leave us restless and critical of ourselves. We justify our ‘shoulds’ as a need of the others. We justify our ‘shoulds’. We cannot understand those who do not understand our compulsions. We are afraid of the vacuum that we will create in our lives if we were without our shoulds. We believe without shoulds, life would be without goals. We believe that without rules life would be anarchy.<br><br>We spend a lifetime chasing our shoulds and, one day, suddenly the costs of our shoulds stare us back and we realise that we have lived a life where we forgot that we had choices. Choice not to do some things. Choices to view people and their actions in tones of grey and not the dichotomous. Choices to allow oneself the space not to pursue, not to fulfill, not to reward or be rewarded, the choice to be and not to do. We overlooked our choices because we were governed by our ‘shoulds’.<br><br>No, I am not advocating an aimless life without rules. I think that there will be stress even if we pursued a life beyond our social contracts, employment contracts or our love affairs or our children. I am not advocating that we should not have any ‘shoulds’. But I do hope we are able to question and let go of our ‘shoulds’ consistently. Longer than the 10-minute curl on the sofa and longer than the length of a weekend holiday. Life would still be stressful in a ‘no shoulds’ world but perhaps it will not be as overwhelming. Perhaps, it will not be as incomplete. When it comes to life, perfection and completeness are not synonyms.<br><br>Stress is in the way we define who we are. It is how we define time and how we define success. The way we define achievements, relationships, contracts and all our interactions and experiences. We have a bull’s eye approach to life. Everything is a bull’s eye and if we do not hit it and do not hit the first time all is devalued if not lost. We gave this loss over and over again. With each loss we disempower ourselves and this disempowerment is called stress. We have a choice not to devalue ourselves. When the only reason we run is to hit the bull’s eye and to hit it before all the others are able to score that is the beginning of stress. The challenge is not hitting the bull’s eye each time but allowing oneself the space not to pursue it sometimes.<br><br>It is fun to not play sometime and it is also fun to try something that we are sure to make a mess of. The bull’s eye man ain’t a happy man, Superman may get Lois Lane but Clarke Kent has a right to live too. And so do you, Janki. Let yourself be ordinary, for once. It is all right! <br><br><em>The writer is Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Apollo Hospital and Chairperson, Saarthak, a mental health organisation</em><br><br>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 27-07-2015)</p>
