So here's the deal. I have asked thousands of people on six continents,
"Why is there stress in your life?" And I've basically boiled it
down to eight categories, and I'm going to list those categories
right now, and if you feel that one of those categories applies to you,
I'd like you to sit down.
Number 1 is financial. "I do not have enough.
I've got mortgage payments to make, I've got kids' tuitions,
I've got all kinds of things. I want to get a bigger house, and darn it,
there just isn't enough." Then there's relationships,
typically with partner or spouse, but can be with siblings,
can be with children, can be with, you know, colleagues, bosses.
You'd like your relationship to be a certain way, and darn it, it isn't.
Children, we all know that children are bundles of joy, correct?
They're sent to bring happiness and fulfillment to you in your life,
but have you noticed that children do the darndest things and they begin early?
They poop right after you've changed them. They fall in love with the most
inappropriate people. They drop out of school. So yes,
children are bundles of joy, they bring you growth and fulfillment,
they also cause you stress. Business and career,
if you're an entrepreneur, you want your business to grow,
you want revenues to be coming, you want customers to be satisfied,
you want to be promoted, you want more responsibility,
bigger paychecks, and darn it, it just isn't going the way you would
like it to be. Health, you'd like to be able to run the marathon,
you'd like to be able to run the marathon in under two hours which would be a really
big deal. But already, you're taking the elevator rather than the short flight
of stairs. And by the way, when I say health, it need not be just
about yourself, it could be the health of people who are close to you as well.
Then there's the big external stuff: politics, environment, climate change,
animal welfare, crime. This is a catch all.
I have too much to do and not enough time to do it all. And then there is "I'm not
where I want to be." We have an image in our heads of where
we would like to be, and we're not there.
And I'd like you to consider that if you mentioned any of those factors as the
reason you felt stress, you are wrong. There is one reason and one reason only
that you feel stress, and that is that you have a very rigid
idea of this is the way the universe should be and the universe is not playing
ball with you.