A New Day

Good morning, God, and thank you for this new day in my life.  My wife and I have just passed a beautiful weekend for our anniversary, and we really do appreciate the opportunities that we had to go up into the mountains, to go hiking, to see the changing aspen and the mountain lake that we hiked to and all the other glorious sights. It was a lovely time, and we both appreciate it very much.

But now today, it's back to work.  That's not a bad thing, obviously, though sometimes it feels like it is.  I often have to catch myself when I think, "Oh, no--I have to go to work today (or tomorrow)," because to be completely honest, that's not something for which "Oh, no" is appropriate.  I like my work.  I enjoy my time in the classroom.  It's not a problem at all for me to go to work, yet sometimes I feel stress creeping up on me and making me feel that somehow the day is going to be negative or challenging or simply bad.

When this happens to me, I feel that I've been unfair to life.  Life has given me a lot of very positive things, yet it's very easy for me to turn them into negatives.  Why should I and how can I turn them into negatives?  Why does my mind do something that's so contrary to reality?  I enjoy the company of my students, and I have a very positive work environment, so why should I stress out about going to do something I enjoy doing with people with whom I enjoy being?  It makes no sense.

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A reply:

"It makes no sense."  Couldn't you say this about many of your reactions and thoughts and feelings throughout the course of your lifetime?  Many of them make no sense at all from a rational perspective, yet you have them anyway.  The important thing about them,  though, is that they give you  a chance to see situations apart from your rational perspective, and they give your self an opportunity to react from a place other than your logical and rational mind.  This doesn't always end up well--for example, when you allow your fear-based reactions to control your actions--but it does give you a chance to see that there are more ways to look at the world than with just the rational side of your mind.

Your tendency to create stress where there is none is a good example of your fear-based approach to the world.  And let's face it--not all of the teaching that you've done has been in environments as positive as the one you're in now.  In some of those cases, your stress was justifiable in some ways, as the environments in which you worked were far from healthy, and things didn't always go well no matter how well you did in the classroom.

But you see, you're progressing well.  It used to be that you carried that stress with you all day into whatever work you were doing.  Now you recognize it early and you try to banish it from your mind well before you ever get to work.  That's a very good thing.  Much of your stress, of course, is caused by the fear of not being well enough prepared, not by the fear of anything the students will do or won't do.  So you also have that dynamic within your control.  You spent yesterday preparing instead of grading, for example, which goes a long way towards helping out with today.

Much of life is about learning--about finding out things that work and things that don't, and then doing more of the former and less of the latter.  You know that stress doesn't work to make your days bright and enjoyable and productive, so you've already discovered how to lessen that stress by focusing on the positive aspects of your work.  And that's a very, very good thing, don't you think?  So take the lessons that you need from life, and don't worry so much about whether you should or shouldn't be thinking or feeling in certain ways--look more at how you respond to those thoughts and feelings.  Thoughts and feelings will arise unbidden, and the quality of your life is determined more by how you respond to them than by what they are to begin with.