Where There's Stress, There's a Story

Just leave the narrative unfinished—not that they ever can be finished—and go back to what you were doing before the storytelling started. That’s where life actually happens.

Whether the story is true or not (or may become true) isn’t important. You may still have to live through an actual audit or a nervous first date, and there is some uncertainty there, some real possibility of pain or difficulty. But even if the topic is decidedly relevant to your life, that doesn’t mean you need to tell or re-tell this story right ... See more

Where there’s stress, there’s a story, and you probably don’t need to hear it. Or tell it.

But there’s no real decision-making happening, no useful preparation, just another unplanned session of self-flagellation, as we demand more control and certainty from our experience than is ever going to be available to us.

Many times a day, we end up ruminating on stressful, unresolvable narratives for completely random reasons—such as remembering a bloody Kansas song—yet somehow it feels like important work is being done. Ostensibly, in each of these mental eddies, you are “preparing” for life by imagining or re-enacting encounters with co-workers, muggers, law enfo... See more

When you notice stress rising at some random moment, find the story. It can probably be summed up in a sentence.

It’s enough to simply recognize this basic relationship between stress and stories. Virtually every time you experience stress, it’s a response to a narrative in the mind, a story about something you feel you need to have happen or prevent from happening.

You don’t need to go on retreat, or even meditate at all, to begin to address this problem, although it is almost certainly the most direct way.

These stories are just a natural by-product of the human mind’s amazing ability to make connections between similar thoughts, but they reliably generate real stress. This free-association ability isn’t wholly a bad thing, and is in fact necessary for making plans and learning from our mistakes. But most of the time it is completely useless idle thi... See more