MODERATING ONE’S SPEED OF LIFE Why was the holiday so stressful? For many people the answer is because of all there was to do, all the demands that "had" to be met. Plans to figure out, people to see, presents to buy, preparations to make, places to go, parties to host or attend: no wonder the season felt so stressful. After all, for every demand people allow upon them, some unit of energy (potential for doing or action) must be spent. But readily available energy is limited. This is why people to resort to stress – a survival response -- to force their system to produce emergency energy to meet over demand. For many people, calling on stress is what allows them to "get though" the holiday, to their later cost. "I just crashed when it was all over!" admitted one exhausted parent who participated fully in the festivities and was now beset by all four stages of stress from striving to meet this seasonal over demand. Fatigue from feeling overspent and developing a negative outlook on that account. Pain from accumulated tensions and feeling irritable on that account. Burnout from over giving and experiencing a loss of caring on that account. Breakdown from incapacity to further respond and becoming temporarily nonfunctional on that account. For people like this parent, the holiday season has a lesson to teach about how hard to push oneself during the next twelve months. Living one’s life at a holiday pace year round is a sure recipe for lifestyle stress. So, as your New Year’s Resolution, you might want to consider resolving to lower your Speed of life in order to moderate your daily stress. What is speed of life? Speed of a person’s life can roughly be calculated by resorting to that formula he or she probably learned back in elementary school: rate of speed = distance/time. Change the distance variable into demand, and the speed with which a person is living can be estimated by assessing the number of demands to be satisfied in relation to the amount of time available to get them met. Speed of life = demand/time. The more demands, the less time, the faster and harder the single parent must push himself or herself to get everything done. To slow down, either he or she must reduce the number of demands, increase the time allotted, or do a combination of both. More specifically, to regulate his or her speed of life, a person must learn to manage three important self-controls: goals, standards, and limits. Goals have to do with achievement. How much does a person want to accomplish and how soon does that person want to get it all done? If, within the forthcoming year, he or she wants to lose substantial weight, train back into good physical condition, find a meaningful relationship, and go back to school a few nights a week to get a better job, the person has committed to a high speed of life. That’s a lot to want very soon. High ambition can create a high speed of life. (Speed of life = how much/how soon.) Standards have to do with excellence. How well does the person want to do all the time? If the person decides to apply standards of perfection to everything he or she does, whether keeping the home immaculate, the children exemplary at school, or exceeding job requirements at work, an impossible ideal becomes the measure for what is good enough. There is no room for inconsistency, error, or ordinary achievement. Less than impeccability is considered failure to adequately perform. One has to lead a high speed of life to keep from falling short of the high criteria one has set. Extreme standards can create a high speed of life. (Speed of life = how well/all the time.) Limits have to do with tolerance. How much can a person do (tolerate) at one time? If the person strives to satisfy every demand that children make to make them happy, or to make the spouse happy, he or she is only likely to encourage even more demands. The more the person tries to satisfy their demands, the more children and spouse come to expect the person to do, the more exhausted the person becomes. Letting other people set one’s limits is a taxing way to go, and a high speed of life results. Unwillingness to set limits encourages excess demands. Incapacity to set limits can create a high speed of life. (Speed of life = how much/at one time.) To moderating your speed of life, discipline yourself to think about how much demand is enough for a given amount of time. One helpful exercise is to make three lists. 1) Specify maximum goals, standards, and limits you would love to live by. 2) Itemize the minimum goals, standards, and limits that would allow you to barely get by. 3) Chart a middle course, describing a moderate set of goals, standards, and limits that would provide sufficiency without going to excess. Instead of going full speed ahead, leading a high speed of life, unmindful of the stressful costs, a person is best advised to go at all deliberate speed -- where some is enough, imperfection is human, and failing to satisfy every want is okay. In a high demand world are people doomed to labor under constant stress? Not if people are clear about the moderating choices they have to make, and the courage to take the stands required. Like all difficult human problems, managing stress is not susceptible to easy solutions, only hard ones. In this case, the solution is saying and meaning and sticking to one little word: "No." By saying "no" to them selves, people can resist the temptation of positive possibilities. There are a multitude of ways most people could enhance their lives, yet each way creates one more source of demands to meet. Sometimes invitations must be refused and some opportunities forgone because a person has too much demand going on already. The person would love to do more, but the current speed of life is fast enough. Resisting others can be even more difficult. By saying "no" to a demanding child for example, a parent can face a negative response. The frustrated son or daughter may well express disappointment, argue, or get angry. "You never let me!" "You have no good reason!" "That’s not fair!" "You don’t love me!" Against the emotional costs of receiving these complaints, the parent has to weigh the stress of giving in and doing more than they can physically afford. Saying "No" is how people moderate demands from themselves and from others. Parents who can’t bear to disappoint their child, who can’t endure their child’s disapproval, who will actually say "I can’t say ‘No,’ have given that child open access to their energy account. They are at risk of soon feeling overdrawn, their speed of life (and associated stress) regulated by their over demanding child. At this point, overstressed parents can get angry at their child for wanting too much; but that anger is misplaced. Rather than blame the child for excess demanding, they should hold them selves accountable for insufficient refusal. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. For permission to use this article, contact the author.