January is the month of new year’s resolutions. I suppose most people’s resolutions revolve around quitting smoking, eating more healthily, drinking less, losing weight, de-cluttering the house… those sort of things. I don’t smoke so I have no need to quit, but my new year’s resolutions from previous years have included all of the other above items. They’ve all become a little cliche to me by now, and pointless as I know I’ll never stick to them. Take “drinking less” for example. I don’t know how many times I’ve declared, “OK guys, I’m going to quit alcohol for a week.” Always, without fail, by day 3 I’m sipping a beer with my dinner. Life is short. So this year I’m going to forget about imposing all those rules on myself. There is only one thing that is important to me, and only one thing I need to focus on, which is:
Don’t stress myself out for no good reason.
It’s actually harder than anything I’ve ever done in my life.
Since I was young, I’ve always been the one giving myself the most pressure. Maybe it’s because my parents don’t give me any pressure at all. Growing up, I got punished for being naughty and other things, but never for my grades. No one ever threatened me that I must excel at my studies and ace my job interviews, or else. No one had to, because I was already stressing the hell out of myself, and I do that with everything I do. Ironically, the time my self-induced stress went through the roof was this past year, when I was supposed to be taking a break from working, from studying, from everything. My husband keeps trying to remind me that the whole point of me coming to Denmark and not having to find a job was so that I could be stress-free and enjoy a relaxed, dreamy life in Denmark as a blissful newlywed.
Apparently I’m not very good at relaxing. I became even more stressed, more anxious, more restless, more doubtful about myself, and just not happy. I wanted to do something, but couldn’t figure out what. It’s frustrating. I started taking Danish courses, which I love, but even that is unnecessarily stressing me out, although so far learning the language has been a piece of cake and I’ve been breezing through the government-mandated levels in half the required time. I stress myself out over exams even though I know I’ll pass them; I stress myself out over cooking dinner, because I want everything to taste perfect; I stress myself out over whether I should help so-and-so with this-and that although I don’t really want to but will feel awfully guilty if I don’t…; I stress myself out over things I need to do and so I make lists, and then proceed to stress over the lists, afraid that I’d forget something (despite the lists) or do something wrong, or… and it goes on and on. Basically, I stress myself out worrying about anything and everything that is yet to happen. Things that are in the future, unknown, uncertain. Everybody worries to some extent, but my worrying and stressing has become something of an obsession.
Perhaps, in a crazy way, I stress because I’m addicted to the stress, because I’ve been giving myself pressure for so long that I don’t know how to feel otherwise. It’s been so long that I have completely forgotten to ask myself this most fundamental question: Why am I doing this to myself anyway? Why do I have to give myself so much pressure, when it’s not helping things, and I can actually achieve things in life without it?
This really has got to stop. Even I can’t stand myself anymore.
If I don’t pass a Danish exam, so what? We might not even be living in Denmark much longer, and what use would my Danish be once we move away? If I don’t impress enough at a job interview, there’s always next time. If I forget to buy something at the supermarket or forget to do something, it’s not the end of the world. If I decide to not do someone a favor because I’d like to have more time for me and my priorities, there’s no reason I should beat myself up over it, because I don’t owe them anything.
I can’t believe what a long post this has become. But it feels good to vent. After this, no more talk about stress. 2012 will be a good, stress-free year. I won’t even “try” to not stress, because “trying” implies that there will be stress involved. I simply won’t. This I promise myself.
That’s a good resolution and not an easy one