Soul Sustenance

Role Induced Stress (Part 1) 

A very common form of stress which has raised its head in recent years is stress induced due to one’s role. There was once a famous sportsman, well known as one of the best of all time and he was obviously very much aware of the same. One day someone mentioned to him that there was a general perception spreading that he was getting older with time and his performance was dropping and he needed to spruce up his performances if he had to compete with the younger sportsmen. As soon as he heard this, he started taking his sport and everything related to it over seriously and lost his happiness completely because he had been used to listening only to praises regarding his performances and reputation all his life. He also forgot all that the world had given him all his life, all the love, respect and adulation and became angry, bitter and resentful towards everyone he met, believing that they no longer held those feelings for him as much as before. Also a general sense of fear and nervousness started developed inside him regarding his performance. 

One piece of information had changed him altogether. What had gripped him – Role Induced Stress. His emotion of stress was made of three sub emotions - sorrow, anger and fear (or worry). What was the cause – he over identified with his role. He believedhe was an extremely famous sports personality. But was he that? It's what he did. But he learned to believe it is what he is.Even we need to remind ourself that we get to play various roles on the world stage of action and that if we over-identify with any of the roles, which a lot of us do, then just like the sportsman, our creativity, spontaneity and lightness is reduced and we start to take things far too seriously, more than necessary, and as a result get stressed. 

(To be continued tomorrow …)