The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

by Brian King

The traffic was real, but it was your own beliefs, values, and expectations that made the situation into one that you found stressful.

Sometimes you just have to sit in traffic.

Worry is one way that the brain can generate its own activity. Yes, worry relieves boredom. And I believe this is why most worrying occurs.

negative emotion can interfere with our ability to think by restricting the range of options that we will consider.

Every stressful situation is really just a situation where the brain does not feel it has any control.

Nothing is our most common stressor, and it is neither traffic nor bears.

We need to learn to react to what actually happened, not what could have happened or what we thought was going to happen.

When it comes to our own health and safety, there is no benefit to allowing ourselves to be affected by things that did not happen.

if you don’t like the way you feel, change your thoughts.

Nobody wants their kids to suffer or experience pain, but there is value in working through difficulties.

As I previously mentioned, optimistic people have pessimistic thoughts all the time, we just don’t dwell on them. One thing that helps is something I have already mentioned: redirecting your train of thought to something else. Literally, anything else. It works for worrying, and it works for all negative thinking in general.

Technically speaking, physical activity is what stress is designed for.