October 7, 2011 Chautauqua

From the Editor's Computer

   "We tend to focus on the people in our lives before the tasks...you need to decrease the people tension (home life, relationships, disagreements, health) before you can...focus on the task tension (deadlines, presentations, work life)."  Karyn Goodwillie

   A few weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing stressful people.  I was told that we need stressful people or life would be too dull. I countered that we need exciting people to enliven our lives. 

   The people you interact with, and your reactions to them, have more of an impact on you (mentally, emotionally, and physically) than any other external or internal factors in your environment. 

   Stressful people make time seem like it is never-ending.  A mere five minutes in their company can feel like eons!  You want to run away and hide, avoiding them at all costs.  When you are around exciting people, however, time is meaningless.  Five hours can fly by and only feel like five minutes.  You tend to seek out exciting people, and want to spend as much time with them as you can.

   Stressful people are hazardous to your health as they deplete your vitality and energy.  Normally healthy individuals can develop chronic, even terminal, illnesses just by being around stressful people for extended periods of time.  Exciting people have an extremely beneficial effect on a person’s overall health as you relax and enjoy their presence.  Some health conditions can be completely reversed by spending time with exciting people. 

   Rarely are we completely powerless regarding our contact with stressful people in our lives.  Waiting for stressful people to change is futile, as they won’t. We can, and should for the sake of our overall health, make the choice to minimize, if not totally eliminate, all contact with stressful people.  At the very least, we should change the way we relate to them, setting and enforcing firm boundaries for all our interactions.     

   We should also boost our contact with exciting people, surrounding ourselves with as many as we can.  Equally important, we must each be an exciting person, not a stressful person, in the lives of those around us.         

 

Beth

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