Stress = disconnection from the present moment

(Originally posted on Wednesday, 2 November 2016)

Stress = disconnection from the present moment.

It's not my idea, but when I heard about it during a training course at my work it blew my mind. This definition of stress is true in vast majority of cases.

How often are you stressed by the present moment? Probably when somebody is yelling at you because you have actually made a mistake. But otherwise the present moment is not really stressful. It's the thinking about what can possibly happen in the future or what had already happened in the past that is stressful. In such cases you can consciously come back to the present moment (stop thinking about the past or about the future and focus on what you are currently doing) to get rid of the stress almost completely.

To be clear: it's obvious that we have to think about the future because we have to plan some things in advance. The point is that when we have already thought a particular thing through and we have made a particular decision then there is nothing more that we can really do. It is pointless to worry about all the possible negative outcomes when there could be only ONE such outcome or NO such outcome at all (the problem may work itself out and disappear).