Inevitablility Thinking Can Be An Enemy

​I confess, I have been stressed lately. People working all around me in the field I work in have been losing their jobs. Ellen Langer says, stress is believing something is going to happen and that when it does, it's going to be awful.

Langer goes on to say there are two ways to deal with this stress that are healthier than just accepting stress.

One, think of reasons the thing you're sure is going to happen might not happen at all. And two, think of reasons that if indeed the event does happen, you'll somehow gain an advantage.

I've been practicing this lately.

First, it is definitely single minded to assume the funding cuts that have led to people losing their jobs around me will lead to cuts in funding that supports my job. That is not a given, so to give all my energy to that one solution - as if it's inevitable - isn't healthy.

(Side note: I've come to accept that inevitability thinking has not been a friend of mine over the years. It's possibly been my greatest enemy).

There are also cases where an organization or agency has found new funding or internal resources to keep people. That hasn't been possible in many cases, but certainly has in some.

But what if it does happen, this awful event?

Is it the end of the world?

I have had jobs end abruptly in the past. Some on my terms, some not. And the result is that today I do the most meaningful work of my life. It fulfills me. It fairly compensates me. It allows me to live out my faith mission as a professional mission: to bring healing to the world. What a gift.

So the end result of me losing every job I've ever left or lost in my life is that I now have the greatest job I've ever had. Who am I to assume losing this job would be the end of that progression in my life?

I have also had people suggest to me the last several years that I should go out on my own. Take my work show on the road. Work for me and not for someone else.

A lot of me knows that is a good idea. Maybe a great one. A lot of me knows I could and would make that work.

A LOT of me, but not all of me.

Working for someone else is a great security blanket. Especially when it comes to health insurance - for me AND for my boys. I have obligations AND desires to support them every way I can. So it's not like cutting the cable cord and going all in on streaming. It's much more complicated than that.

However, if someone indeed cuts the cord on me while I sleep, I will wake up knowing there are possibilities. Sometimes not having a choice is the greatest motivator there is to make some of our best choices ever.

So I am stressed, yes. But I am not debilitated by my stress. Which hasn't always been the case. I am a story-teller, and the stories I used to tell most were stories predicting the worst possible outcomes in my life.

Additionally, I used to be really good at making those predictions come true.

But no more.

We can all wake up believing that life sucks.

But I have learned, thankfully, that on the other side of believing that, we all have the power to ask a follow up question:

Does it really?

Maybe you are stressed about an event you are sure is going to happen?

Are you totally certain it's going to happen? And even if it does, maybe it's not the end of the world, but the beginning of one you never saw coming.

Stress is often inevitable.

Staying there is not.