Academic Life: Stress and Self-Care

  'Tis the season for stress to be on the rise.  Semesters are ending, holidays are here, and inflation and supply issues have made everything more expensive and harder to get.  It's times like this that it's easy to let a small mistake turn into something way bigger than it needs to be.  It's easy to let one misunderstanding turn into a fight.  One simple oversight becomes a massive problem. Ahhh, the joys of stress. When this happens, the best thing we can do is pause.  Take a step back.  Walk away from the email.  Put the phone down.  When we jump to dealing with something, we often end up reacting to a situation rather than responding.  Reactions are hot, not thought out, and explosive.  Responses are calm, considered, and a way to deal with the problem without making things worse.  So, how do you trigger this response?  You take a breath.  Unless it's life and death, nothing needs to be addressed right now. ...

  Last week, my nephew got me reading this book called "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck".  It's a very interesting book.  Basically, the author's premise is that we all care a lot about something; but, too often what we end up caring about are the mundane things in life - the things that we really shouldn't care so much about.  It's really easy to fall into the daily routine of life and to place all of our attention and energy there.  But, what good does this actually do us? When all is said and done, do we really want to look back on our lives and say "Oh, I worked hard at a job that didn't appreciate me", "I made sure the house was always clean", "I watched a lot of tv"?  Probably not.  We want our lives to be something filled with exciting memories and fun adventures.  The mundane is great for balancing things out.  After a very crazy few months, I'm grateful to have some boredom this week.  But, boredom and tedium ...