Dearest dears,

Let’s talk about stress.  No, I’m not going to bring out an anatomy book and tell you how stress is a beautiful, human experience.  Mostly because I would be inauthentic if I offered you such a view…awk-ward.

Stress can be very real.  Let me tell you, old Clancy dog here felt stress whenever me and my sisters, WHO WERE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE A DOG, got anywhere close to our cousins’ dog Clancy.  Poor girl.  She couldn’t get away from us.

For any of you who know me, you know that the status quo never satisfies me.  I refuse to accept that we are here to live anything other than our absolute best lives, all the time.  I watched too much Oprah growing up, as if such a thing were possible.   And so, something as basic as stress, even if I have to buy it a car to make it go away, I’m going to do everything in my power to extinguish it.

I also know that the universe craves balance, and so what goes up, must come down.  So my desires for extended good times can be characterized as a fool’s errand, born out of watching The Secret one too many times at a formative age.  

This week felt particularly stressful - more than recent memory.  (More about the cause of that next week.). I’m not accepting it, though.  Ok, yes, I know I can’t fight it.  “Don’t stress!” Ha. I learned somewhere around the age 28 that I couldn’t gaslight myself into not feeling what I’m feeling.  So I’m not talking about that.

No, I’m talking about something much more simple - something that our most basic lizard brains love.  Distraction!

Now, I hear you thinking, Lauren, distracting yourself with another Real Houswives episode isn’t going to make the stress go away.  And, James Lipton, you’d be right if that was I was doing.  But no, instead, I am finding the related but helpful quality I’d like to inhabit.

Let me take a step back here.  A brilliant friend of mine once told me that the same chemicals in your brain create both nervousness and excitement  - the difference between nervousness and excitement is what you are telling yourself about those chemicals in your brain. Crazy, right?  So if you’re nervous, you probably are excited, and you can focus on the excitement side instead of the nervous side.

So, that’s what I did.  I distracted myself with excitement, instead of anxiety. I thought about how grateful I am for the things causing me stress.  Because as much as gratefulness can be a very annoying practice when forced upon you, it can be quite beautiful when I open up to it.  (oh lord, I promised you I wasn’t going to make this sound like the god-awful birds and the bees talk up at the top of this letter, and I’ve broken my promise.)  But I can’t help it.  This gratefulness for the THING causing me stress fills me with oxytocin instead of existential dread.  I’ll probably drop back into stress, in about 1.5 seconds, but then I’ll have another chance to distract myself.  And then I can watch Real Housewives guilt free, lol.

Always, 

X

PS. Speaking of gratefulness.  I’m so grateful that you’ve been streaming Ghosts !!!! Keep going, it helps me so much when my streaming numbers are high.  XOXO

THANKS FOR READING!