Much like in the Friends theme song, today hasn’t quite been my day, and this week hasn’t quite been my week. I’ve felt riddled with obligations, exhausted by my inability to relax, and have embraced the unexpected. I’ve called my mom more times this week than I have since the school year started, hoping to be comforted by her wise words and calming presence. In an attempt to calm myself down, I’ve been repeating affirmative mantras in my head—things like, “You’ve been stressed before and you’ve always survived, this should not be any different,” or, “Eventually you will figure housing out,” and, “No matter what happens, you’ll be home in December, falling asleep on the couch at 3AM watching Shark Tank.”
While these strategies are incredibly helpful to me in dealing with stressful situations that seem trivial in hindsight, I’m starting to realize that they aren’t very helpful in the long run. Of course, it’s important to de-escalate when you feel stressed, and it’s important to have perspective and realize that one exam or paper in college is just that. Still, the fact that I must continuously remind myself that one stressful situation is not the end-all be-all of my happiness suggests that perhaps, putting things in perspective and pushing through isn’t the most productive way to calm down.
While simply pushing through the stress may mean you eventually do reach your end goal, you don’t figure out how to make it better the next time, and you don’t learn how to readjust your expectations. Anyone who knows me can attest to the adverse ways in which I deal with change. I literally vomited on my best friend before leaving for college freshman year, distraught that she would no longer pick me up each morning on the way to school. Still, change happens consistently. Rather than assuring myself that I can get through one stressful situation based on my track record of making it through every other stressful situation, I need to adjust my expectations and lower the stakes to relieve stress.
This past week of my life has been incredibly stressful. And while this stress is privileged – as in, feeling behind on academic work at a wonderful college, or worrying about which apartment I will live in next year—it still takes a toll on my physical and mental health. Rather than comparing stressful situations to ideal ones, I’m working to accept that not everything will always make me happy. In the past, I’ve focused on ways in which I can manipulate situations so that they make me happy. While that strategy benefits me in the short run, it does very little to prepare me for future stressors. Instead, I think it’s important to work on understand that failing an exam or letting someone down, while not ideal, is not the end of the world; it’s okay to have a bad day. It’s okay to deal with a situation even when it is far less than ideal.
More importantly, I’m realizing that having things differ from my (normally specific) expectations doesn’t make them inherently bad. There is value in letting go of expectations and embracing new opportunities.
Images courtesy of Verywell and Tiny Buddha