The Role of Stress in Our Everyday Life Essay

“Those who think they have no time for learning how to deal with stress, will sooner or later have to find the time to deal with illness.” This is what first appears on screen during the lecture on stress, linking chronic stress to psychosomatic illness. The rest of the lecture, in large part, expounds on this statement, and shows that there is knowledge that can change our views on and reactions to our stressors. I found this lecture extremely rewarding, especially with regard to its focus on time management as a major contributor to our level of stress, as I am a person who finds it difficult to prioritize my schedule.

The first clip is from the movie My Life with Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman. It is shown to exemplify how one’s view on a situation contributes to the level of stress one experiences in that situation. Michael Keaton’s character rides a roller coaster which is something he has been scared to do for some time. He rides next to a child who is not scared—who perceives the experience as fun, safe, and rewarding. Michael Keaton cannot let go of the seat car, and the child rides the roller coaster with his hand straight up in the air. The lecturer goes on to explain that stress is not the ride itself, but the reaction one has to the ride. It is created in large part by our perceptions.

An expectation of failure is said to have a large impact on our stress levels. In the aforementioned clip, Keaton expects the coaster to fail, however the clip shown to demonstrate this specifically has to do with shyness in social situations. The phenomenon that ensues when we have poor expectations of ourselves is called the closed circle. We believe we are inadequate, so we behave in ways that prove our inadequacy, and that elicit responses from people that reinforce our beliefs. I have had some pretty intense battles with shyness, and can attest to the hopelessness that is experienced in these situations. I came to the same conclusion as the class and the lecturer came to, which is that the best way to overcome these types of problems is to accept shyness, and to associate with people who are also shy. This acceptance of self can create self-esteem—it gave me a foundation from which to build on in my personal life.

Expounding further on the expectations we have that create stress, the lecturer shows his third clip from a film called King Ralph. The clip shows an American who receives the British crown performing rock ‘n’ roll for his aristocratic guests. He confounds all expectations of how a king should behave—an act that clearly stresses many at the gathering. One thing that I related to in this clip is the amount of fun the title character has while performing—sometimes it is exhilarating to behave wildly before those who are stuffy and uptight.

The lecturer discusses time management in a way that has truly changed my view on what it means to prioritize, and how that process will work in my favor. He takes a jar—time—and has two types of things he can fill it with. He has small rocks, and bigger balls. If I fill my time with the small things first, the big things will not fit into the jar, but if I fill the jar with the big things first, the small things can still fit around the big things and I will end up with time to spare. This visual representation of how to utilize time made clear for me something that I have always struggled with, because I have always been worried about not having time for the little things I so enjoy.

The lecturer discusses how stress can also flood us with energy enough to accomplish amazing things. In a clip from Simon Birch shown, the title character rescues many children from a bus that is being flooded. In my life, I have experienced many stressful situations and accomplished great things in the heat of very intense moments. This hit home for me. However, the lecturer says something that I needed to hear—he mentions that we cannot expect ourselves to accomplish feats like this too regularly. It drains our organism, he says, and because I have also experienced that “drain” I am taking from this a sense that I must alter my expectations on myself in the name of reason.

The last couple of clips are non-fictional. One has to do with eating disorders, and the other with stress management. Eating disorders, it seems, have to do with compensating for a lack of a support system in others, and a large part of stress management has to do with not taking ourselves too seriously. These things, I believe, I understand pretty well already.