Yes I am aware that I have not blogged during the summer months. Who had time? With all the rain we had here it was a constant struggle against the weeds! Now with harvest upon all of us it is a struggle to get the vegetables in before they rot on the vine. That being said Colin and I managed to go off on a fine vacation out west.

Now that we are in mid September and the pickles and jams are nearly done, the time has come for me to start on my CMS Level 2 homework.

Todays topic is stress: Oy! During our vacation we managed to shed a lot of our worries, leaving them behind in Quebec while we sampled the splendours of Alberta. We enjoyed some of the unsettled life that my cousin Shauna experiences daily as a Parks Canada employee. She and her husband Julian work from May to October leaving the rest of the year to bike tour across the Andes, through Tibet and Thailand, around Mexico, and for this upcoming year - Patagonia! This Unsettled life is somewhat idyllic compared to the stresses that we contend with living in the big city. Living in the big city, with its traffic, its rush rush, and working in biotech or IT where there are constant demands for faster and quicker results with fewer resources and time, certainly made an excellent case for going for the USD (Un-Settling Down). It took us nearly two weeks for us to get back to the chest-tightening, head-throbbing, teeth grinding pace that we consider normal.

The question is - why would anyone in their right mind consider the feeling of stress as normal? What causes this feeling and why? In a biological context stress is integral to the fight or flight reaction. Neural circuitry from the reptilian portion of our brain fires epiniphren into the system to tighten muscles and heighten blood pressure for an immediate and quick response to incoming threats. The problem is that we never evolved coping mechanisms past the replitilan brain. In this modern era we deal mostly with information in the form of language and numbers, and movement/motion. We sort, prioritize, list compare, and judge information as it enters through our senses in a continuous data stream. When we can no longer track and process all the incoming information we become overwhelmed and initiate a stress response. A good example of this is to arrive in the office on Monday morning only to discover that you have three reports to finish and your boss has suddenly organized an all-day meeting to help him figure out what he is supposed to do. -STRESS! Another good example is rush-hour traffic with pedestrians leaping into the road in front of you, cars failing to stop at intersections or cutting you off by turning left from the right hand lane invokes and immediate stress response because you are perceiving that you are under attack from multiple threats, when in fact your brain cannot process all the movements of the other individuals on the street.

However, aside from too much incoming information and our inability to process it as quickly as possible, much of our lingering stress results from our ego. Our ego constantly processes information, compares and judges and classifies data compared to previous experiences that our mind has stored. A good example of this is the rush-hour drive into work. My drive should ideally take only twenty minutes, when I am stuck on the bridge for more than 40 minutes I become stressed because 1) I am late for work (comparing actual time to nominal work start time) and 2) the drive is currently twice as long as the expected ideal time. In both instances the current rush-hour drive as failed to live up to my expectations. My biggest problem is that I have an expectation that I can do more than I actually can. The end result -I am stressed because I cannot meet my expectations. The same thing can be applied to individuals who stress us out. Why do they stress us out, because they fail to meet our expectations regarding their behavior, opinions, even their appearance.

What do we need to do in order to combat stress? 1) Be aware when our mind is being overwhelmed by incoming information. Your brain needs the time to process information and to prioritize what is important and what can wait. When too much information comes at you, take a break a 2minute walk down the hall will give your brain the time to process the information so you can stop spinning your wheels in a stress. Alternatively, as in the case of downtown traffic, you can avoid the situation entirely by taking public transport or avoiding the rush-hour insanity. I feel that the biggest factor to reducing stress is to stop indulging in your left-brained story-tellers expectations. You are not a God in the world where all your actions are infallible, and nobody else in your drama is going to behave according to your expectations, because they only see you as a function of their story-teller. Learn to be aware and whenever possible remind your internal story-teller that the current expectation is not reasonable and does not exist. Take the time to tend your mental garden, and see if your overall stress levels will go down.