Let's talk about stress...

Stress.

Stress to the engineer is what happens when there are two opposing forces acting against each other on some material. A piece of steel can be stressed by machine by either pulling at each end or pushing at each end. Strain is the physical effect the stress has on the material.

When a person is stressed it is because there are two voices within saying opposite things. They might easily be, "Go to work!" and "I want to stay at home!"

You can't stress a material by a single force: you will only start it moving. And the same applies to people: if there is just one force on us we tend to move without strain. It is only if there is an opposition that we become stressed and feel strain.

A great deal of the stress in life is a result of the battle between on the one hand what we feel we OUGHT to do, have GOT to do or MUST do and on the other hand the things
that we WANT to do, LIKE to do or DESIRE to do.

The fear of failure is often the whip behind OUGHT - GOT - MUST making them seem irresistible. And the worship of Success - material, sexual or social - generally intensifies the WANT - LIKE - DESIRE into cravings that also seem irresistible. Since these two forces are generally opposed, together they intensify the stress and strain of life.

And so a wonderful antidote to so many of the stress of life is to smile and say, "It's OK to fail to do everything I feel I ought to, and OK to fail to have everything I want to have." That leads to satisfaction and happiness.

- He who is the most content is the richest among all -