Cause of Stress

I had an interesting thought just now after talking to my Mom on the phone. Where is my stress coming from?


I was telling her how much I hate my teaching job. If it weren't required for my tuition waiver and stipend, I would have already quit. Everything about it sucks.


"Don't let it stress you out," she told me. "You should try your best not to let anything stress you out. But if you do let something stress you out, it had better be something you really care about. Something like your schoolwork that matters for your career. Don't let something you don't care about stress you out."


This got me thinking. In the past I had been very stressed out by schoolwork. It started in middle school, got worse in high school, and plateaued in college as I worked on two degrees and two jobs all at once. Last semester, I was also very stressed out about schoolwork.


This semester, I have not been all that stressed about schoolwork. Ever since I learned that people are the most productive when they are happy, that has completely changed my outlook on the stress of schoolwork. I've tried to live every day like I'm still on vacation, and it seems to work very well.


So then, what is causing me stress?


The answer is obvious. People cause me more stress than schoolwork ever has. What am I always worrying about? My relationships with people. What am I always complaining about? My relationships with people. What continues to make me deeply sad and afraid? My relationships with people. I wouldn't have two blogs that discuss my unhappiness with people if that weren't the case.


I guess the reason for that is that people mean a lot to me. They always have. That's why it's so upsetting when friendships end. When other people mistreat me. When other people don't want to include me. I care so much about them, and they don't care back.


So according to my Mom's advice, allowing myself to stress out about other people is ok, because I really care about other people. But actually, I don't think it's ok. If I wasn't spending so much of my time and energy being stressed out about people, what could I do? How much happier would I be? How much more productive would I be as a result?


Here comes the problem: what to do about it? I've always been good at finding the problems, but I'm less good at figuring out solutions to them. I don't know.