From Stress to Strength!

Being a cancer patient, there are a number of stress, in additional to your daily and routine ones. Imagine you are already under pressure financially to sustain the minimum living of a family, and you have a demanding job and not so smooth working relationship with other colleagues, and from time to time, you have some arguments with your wife or kids. Life is never perfect, and stress is always there somewhere waiting. Then, one day, unexpectedly, your doctor informed you about the relationship between you and cancer, say Stage 4 and you will have about 6 - 8 months life expectancy. (*It's important that you put YOURSELF into this scenario and try to FEEL the stress at that very moment! Feel it? Feel the stress?)

Since the establishment of this Blogger, positive feedback are received on a daily basis with the number of readership ever increasing. From time to time, I also receive emails from people I have not met. One of them suffering from cancer saying "One can stay as positive as they can, but the reality remains the same!" In other words, no matter how we think, whenever we are returning to the "real world", the stress and the challenges are all there and cannot be resolved even if we keep a positive (or very positive) mindset. What difference does it make (between keeping a positive attitude or not)? It's rather natural that we praise people with positive attitude, while when people express their stress (or negative attitude), they often being "talked out of it" or "suppressed" as in general terms, it is not a right/good thing to do.

My sharing is the following:

True! By merely "thinking positively" cannot solve the problems in the real world. However, by thinking positively provides us with the courage (and wisdom) that may open up more possibility to resolve the problem. The strength of thinking positively is to increase our probability of resolving the problem!

Stress usually is defined as a mental barrier that we created for ourselves. In other words, by RE-defining the mental barrier, the stress may disappear. For example, if an assignment would need to be completed before 5:00pm today, then immediately, the deadline of 5:00pm today becomes the stress. On the other hand, if I RE-define the deadline, say "take it easy, I will try my best to get it done before 5:00pm today", then the stress will be eased. Even better, now with a "targeted time" for completion of the assignment, the stress is now the strength (the target)!

More social supports are always better than being isolated. I personally is a firm believer of teamwork and a team of people is always better than a man acting alone. Therefore, by sharing a positive attitude among teammates and to invite participation of others would usually increase the chance of success. Alternatively, what good does it bring you if you are facing the problem on your own? Do you think being one person, you are really better than a collective of a few? Releasing this stress will immediately turn into a strength, both psychologically and practically. For those that have tried resolving problem this way would surely tell you that although interactions among teammates sometime can be difficult, the process itself can be enjoyable!

Look closer to the picture above, there are a lot of "stress" on the pedals of the flower. The stress is always there. Meantime, if we take a positive attitude and to share our stress among our families and friends, we may still unable to resolve all challenges in "real life", but we at least have increased the probability of success!