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Week 7 [14.05-20.05.2018] How to stay calm when you know you’ll be stressed.


Stress changes how people made decisions, we’re just forgetting how to act – our choices and words are not congruent with our normal behaviour. Do you remember your last stressful situation? I bet, if you could go back in time, you would do things differently – simply because now you thinking clearly.
I’m not saying that stress is a bad thing, and all this situations are useless and depressing – In my opinion that kind of experience builds your character and prepare you for next challenges.
You have to remember that you can’t fix what you can’t control. My frame is simple – “stop trying to make things happen and instead, start allowing them to happen” – just let go all negative thinking, and start living in the moment. Embrace the stress and calm down – now you can’t change all the factors that led you to this situation – but what if you could predict them?



Questions:
1) Are you afraid of stressful situations or you treat them like a challenge?
2) Do you think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure?
3) What do you think about decisions taken in stressful situations? Do you regret them and think about things that you could do better or embrace them and draw conclusions?


Comments

Unknown said…
I don't like stressful situations and try to avoid them all the time but if I find myself facing one then I will treat it as a challenge that I must accept. Everybody faces difficult and unpleasant situations and sometimes you have no other choice but facing them with all your courage you have even if it makes you feel depressed and afraid.
Of course, because when you plan stuff you take everything under your control. And when you do it you feel more confident about your actions.
In my opinion, we will always regret some of our decisions made in stressful situations because we would feel that we could somehow foresee the cause of problems at first place. But I agree that we also need to make conclusions about our bad decisions and try to take wiser actions next time.
Lukasz Mroczek said…
I'm not always afraid of stressful situations and I rather treat them like a challenge but there are particular cases that I'm afraid a little bit.
I'm sure that planning ahead reduces amount of stressful situations in our life. I have more important things to stress about than deadlines at school for example and that's why I like to plan everything ahead to save my nerves.
Decisions we've taken in stressful situations are the ones that we will always wonder about but not always we have to regret them.
Unknown said…
I think most people would like to live a peaceful life without any worries or problems. However, life is not so beautiful and sometimes there are stressful moments. As far as I am concerned, it depends on what kind of stress or sports stress or life stress it is. Sport stress is the one that motivates you to work harder and more challenging. This stress is ok. Life stress is more difficult, especially when we wait for something. I hate the feeling which I'm waiting for something and can't do anything more.
Of course, learning from mistakes or experience is important, at least for me. I can learn from it what is worth doing and what is not worth doing. I try not to regret my decisions, because they are a thing of the past and I will not do anything about them anymore.
Iman Masjedi said…
The stress factor is fear. The cause of fear is not having enough knowledge about the subject. So, the higher the knowledge of human is the lower fear of human.
Future planning reduces your stress. Because you try to reduce the risk of mistakes with future planning and make better use of your time.
In my opinion, always the first decision is the most mistaken decision, because the decision to be taken in a haste has a high risk of error and risk.
Anna Koca said…

1) Are you afraid of stressful situations or you treat them like a challenge?
Both. It is never pleasant to have something stressful ahead of you, because if something makes you nervous, it means that probably the outcomes of it are important to your life - e.g. exams, job interview, surgery. But, following this logic, life without stressful situations would mean life with no important moments.
2) Do you think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure?
I am not a big planner, but certainly experience is what make you calmer in stressful situations. I guess you can try to plan your way best you can, and still reality can surprise you. However experience is not that easy to fool.
3) What do you think about decisions taken in stressful situations? Do you regret them and think about things that you could do better or embrace them and draw conclusions?
When I think about stressful situations, I do not associate it immediately with making decisions. For me it's rather about testing you abilities - like during exams or job interviews.
Maciej Główka said…
I try to treat stressful situations as a challenge with different result. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think that planning ahead might help you react under pressure, but it also depends on your character. Reality can always surprise you in a way you didn't think of and then your reaction depends only on your experience and personal abilities. Do I regret decisions taken in stressful situations? I try to always think again about such decision and what would I do now, without stress. As far as I remember, my decision in both situations are mostly the same.
I am not really afraid of stressful situations(at least I think so) because every time when I am in a hurry, for example, I try to convince myself that everything is great, I have just enough time and etc. I’ve read that such approach can help you in most of the situations. So for me the best practice is to make myself believe that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about.

Definitely, I believe that it is the most efficient thing we could do. It’s our plan B. In most of the stressful situations we spend a lot of time to get ourselves together and start doing something. In this case we could just follow the scenario we have written before and it saves us a lot of time.

Mostly I don’t regret decisions made in stressful situations as long as it doesn’t somehow influence my relatives or friends. I regret being angry while I am under the stress. I just need a time to calm down and if someone tries talking to me it ends bad in most cases.
Unknown said…
1. Most of the time I try to avoid stressful situations. Since I know however that it’s a wrong practice, that leads to nowhere, I face those situations as a challenge and consider them a chance to learn something.
2. It seems like planning ahead is important but at the same time people are more forgetful under the stress. In the end it gets down to getting used to stressful situation and to a person. Some people can handle stress better than others.
3. I try no to think about neither good or bad decisions I made. Afterwards I indeed drew conclusions but at the same time I try not to overthink it.
Unknown said…
Of course, I am afraid of stressful situations and rather don't treat them as a challenge. It 's obvious that when you plan everything earlier, that makes your life easier and changes the way you react under pressure. If you plan before, you can avoid many unpleasant situations. We are also better prepared for unplanned situations. In very stressful situations, I happen to sound stupid. Which I later interprets and I try to repair it.
Unknown said…
1) Are you afraid of stressful situations or you treat them like a challenge?
I'm more afraid of making wrong or bad decision than the situation by itself. And all stressful situations are challenges for all of us.

2) Do you think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure?
Yes, I've got several stressful situations, when I remembered about my own thoughts. Never thought that this is this "pre-mortem" thinking though. But now I will do it more often, because I know now, what helps me in that kind of situations.

3) What do you think about decisions taken in stressful situations? Do you regret them and think about things that you could do better or embrace them and draw conclusions?
This all depends on the situation, sometimes I regret, sometimes I draw conclusions. Some stressful situations don't happen often or even they happens once in a lifetime, and bad decision is haunting me for long time... And some situations are regular and conclusions drawing is a must.
Maciej Nowak said…
I don't like stressful situations and I always try to avoid them but also this stress gives me sometimes motivation to work and to get over situation as fast as possible. Planning ahead can help you better understand the situation in which you are getting in and even if you can't predict everything that will happen, it will definitely give some confidence which will help in enduring through it. I sometimes feel bad because of bad decisions in my past even if I understand that I can't change past. However, I try to remember about them in order to not make the same bad decision in the future.
I like chalenges that i willingly participate in, unfortunally not all of them are of that kind but i usually welcome them anyway, because character is forged in suffering =3. I love to plan everything and it helps me to make tasks almost effortlessly and as a lazy person i love to not overstrain myself. As for selfpity about how good i could've done anything it happens sometimes, but i try to get over it as fast as possible because what was done cannot be undone and there is no need to go over it again and again.
Jakub Lisicki said…
I don't like stressful situation and I don't treat most of them as a challenge. For me, they're mostly something unpleasant which requires us to deal with it. This means that I am avoiding some of them that are avoidable, but doesn't mean that I am not learning from them. Stress is pretty useful and makes us achieve more then we normally do (unless we're way too stressed to be able to think straight.)
I am trying to plan ways of resolving some stressful situations ahead and I think it makes me make better decisions (or just accept my fate.) I don't think that only applies to this kind of situations, though. It applies to all kind of situations, planning ahead usually makes us make decisions which are not made in a rush.
I think that I sometimes I could have made much better decisions, if only I had a little more time to think about the situations. I always try to make myself better at any kind of situations, but it's not easy. We are just humans, we make mistakes. The most important thing is to learn from them, it's the only thing that matters.
Unknown said…
Actually I'm not afraid of stressful situations because there not a lot of situations stressful for me. I think I have high tolerance to unpleasant situations so it just don't bother me.
Plan ahead is definitely a great way to coup with a lot of potentially stressful situations. Not to mention great comfort it brings.
Regretting something is rejecting of who you are or was. Its not the best way to live if you ask me. So if I made a decisions and have a results that do not satisfy me Im trying to draw a conclusion on how should I change my behavior to get the results I want.
Filip Sawicki said…

No I am not afraid of stressful situations. I rather feel the rush and challenged to do my best. This comes in handy while speaking in public or conducting presentations in front of managing director. Yes planning ahead does change the pressure, being prepared for conversation or a talk is always the reason why I’m not really stressed. However at the same time it is not beneficial to think too much about the upcoming situation, you can easily enter the danger zone of overthinking the failure. I never really did bad with my past decisions taken in stressful situations, there is nothing I regret but at the same time I always draw conclusions to know better what to expect of myself in different situations.
Vladlen Kyselov said…
I am not afraid of the stressful situations, but I am always afraid of consequences that might happen later from wrong decisions made while being stressed. I think you can never be prepared for the stress, because if you are prepared then how can you get stressed? I try not to make any serious decisions while I am stressed that helps not to regret later for decisions made before.
Marcin Górski said…
I don't like stressful situations but I always try to overcome that. As you said, it's something like challenge for me.
Yes, of course I think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure because you can be prepared for that. I think that time organization it's something which can prevents these situations because you can think about everything. It's like in a school. If you have some projects and you do it at the last minute it's very stressful because you can't make a wrong decision, there is no room for mistakes.
I always try to prevent them but if it not possible it's normal for me to draw conclusion. People are learning everyday and it's very important to learn from mistakes.
Foodocado said…
I don't like stressful situations. I try to avoid them as often as it is possible. I must admit, that I hate public speeches. It's one of those situations which makes me stressful. However, after all these years, I believe there are not many situations that would stress me

Planning ahead helps for sure. It's one of the best ways for me to overcome stress.

I am one of those people who doesn't regret anything. I believe everything in life has a purpose. It's good to teach from our mistakes.
Jakub Nietupski said…
It depends how much given situation is stressful and how well prepared I am for the task ahead of me. For example, if I am attempting to pass an exam that I have studied for, then a little bit of stress can be motivating and enable me to focus and recollect my thought more efficiently.
Planning ahead can definitely affect the way you act in a given situation. Problem is that stressful situations are often unexpected. You often get stressed exactly because something doesn't happen according to your plan.
I try to own up to my decisions but if I realize I made a mistake I don't hesitate to fall back.
Unknown said…
I was afraid earlier but after a few years of work like a tour guide I thought that I have been so frequent in the tourism of the unexpected and stressful moments that sooner or later seem to be so adequate.
I do not planing far off, but perhaps there is a stressful situation that can spoil everything.
We all have a moment, when you can not sleep at all while sleeping and all the night you remember something from the old memories, and I'm sure you're saying "I'd have to say something like this or else I would have been different." It can be said that this is an exercise in the brain :D :D
Unknown said…
1. I often had stressful situations in my childhood. During these situations, probably yes, I treated them like an explosion. But I can’t describe this stressful condition.

2. Yes, my mother asked: why do I think about the bad, because you always need to think positively. But I realized that I was doing this so that in case of a bad result or a stressful condition, my brain already had a solution to the problem, or at least a clue.

3. I never regretted how I acted and what could have done better. In that situation, I did what I thought best. If I think that I have not done enough for the solution, I will certainly think about this situation to be more confident in my actions next time.
Unknown said…
1) Are you afraid of stressful situations or you treat them like a challenge?
I try to treat them like a challenge for past few years and it really works out for me. The higher stake there is, the harder it is to not get scared. If you ever find yourself in the situation, this is a perfect moment to challenge yourself, because the harder situation is, the more you can learn from it.

2) Do you think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure?
Sure thing, it is in fact very common recommendation to plan ahead your steps. It supposedly makes you less vulnerable to stress, as you were imagining yourself in similar situation before.

3) What do you think about decisions taken in stressful situations? Do you regret them and think about things that you could do better or embrace them and draw conclusions?
It obviously depends on the final result of taken decision. Sometimes decisions made under stress are very beneficial as we are deeply focused on our goal in the moment. In case of these bad decisions, I try to learn on my mistakes and don't repeat them in the future.
Not being afraid of stressful situations can make u sick. Its important for our mental health not to be over prepared for everything, because in extreme conditions that will make you unable to act when needed.
I already plan ahead, what minimizes the stressful parts is knowing my craft/ my role. There is no need to stress if u know your part, just do your best u would not be there if u were wrong person for the job always remember that.
I learn from potential mistakes, if such bad/ regretful decision happens ill control my emotions better next time.
1) Are you afraid of stressful situations or you treat them like a challenge?
I'm not afraid of stressful situations, i would say that i'm more motivated when stressful situations happen. I'm always trying to stay calm in every situation and to find the right solution. And yes, i like to challenge this kind of situations.
2) Do you think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure?
Maybe yes, maybe not. We can not predict what can happen. But we can be ready for it. And what about reacting under the pressure - it depends on a personality.
3) What do you think about decisions taken in stressful situations? Do you regret them and think about things that you could do better or embrace them and draw conclusions?
As i mentioned,decisions can be good and bad. But you don't need to regret about them. We are learning something from our mistakes, so any decision would be useful.
Illia Kalinin said…
I may say that I can keep myself calm under stress, so usually if this situation appears I take them as a challenge.
Indeed it may help, because if you plan you can imagine some situations that may appear, and when on those will appear you will be ready.
Mostly I regret about these decisions , it is always better to think twice.
Not sure how helpful this was. I mean, he's saying rethink every possible scenario that could go wrong and plan ahead. This mentality will lead to more stress. Would it not? There is no benefit in thinking about problems that haven't occurred yet. Rational systems to prevent problems is great! However, for example, if I have a kid one day, I'm not going to think through everything that could potentially go wrong BEFORE something does go wrong. That is a problem with modern-day psychology, over thinking and stressing about scenarios that haven't happened yet.
For me, it is a little bit complicate to fight with stress situations, during then I feel like a leaf, I have tremor in my arms, my head is full of panic, and I don's see the possible bailout plan.
Ordinary, I try to escape such type of situations. And even if the speaking could be in the near future complicate i try to avoid some sentences and word which can lead some stress situation.
Unknown said…
Thanks for sharing!
Try not to avoid stresfull situations, I know it could be hard, but look at this way - First, judge how important this situations is, then, if it isn't, treat it like a lesson and try to change Your behaviour during it - it could be helpful in next similiar situation ;)
Unknown said…
Thanks Lukasz!
It's OK to be afraid. Planning ahead is indeed helpful to stay calm. Your right about not regreting things we said or done ;)
Unknown said…
Thanks for sharing!
I like Your point of view Mateusz! It's healthy. Keep it goin'!
With some time with experience being in same conditions and repetitive situations, everyone starts to be sure that he has already seen everything and he can anticipate everything that will happen. In such moments can happen something unpredictable, because life is a thing that cannot be predicted. Therefore, I try to treat all predictable, strange situation easier, because everything eventually turns into the past, and it`s always nice to remember it with the smile.
Patryk Górski said…
1. It depends. Sometimes I just think, that I can chill out and handle the situation properly. But sometimes it's just too much and then I am having problems with it. I am trying to think "why you are so stressed, it's nothing serious" and sometimes it works.

2. I don't think so. Sometimes you can think about it for a months, and then you realize that it gave you nothing - you are standing there still stressing out.

3. Those decisions sometimes could be dangerous and have an impact on your future. Be careful when you are stressed and trying to decide about something. It can go completely wrong
Andrzej Gulak said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said…
1) Are you afraid of stressful situations or you treat them like a challenge?

I can admit that I am afraid of stressful situations but I always trying to deal with such emotions and then such potentially stressfully situations are a challenge for me.

2) Do you think that planning ahead could change the way you react under pressure?

I thik that it is 100% true because when we are prepared for any potential scenarious in our life then we can feel calm because we are aware that we are ready to deal with problems which we thought before.

3) What do you think about decisions taken in stressful situations? Do you regret them and think about things that you could do better or embrace them and draw conclusions?

It depends because sometimes when I made a decision in stressful situations after some time I realised that I should have made a different decision. I prefer to have a time to think before making any serious decisions in my life.
Unknown said…
Thanks for sharing Anna!
1. Good point of view, I didn't see it like that before, thank You ;)
2. Yep, thats truth - thats why it's good to have a lot of experience ;)
3. Nice way!
Unknown said…
1. Great conclusions, it's good that You noticed that!
2. In my opinion it's all abou the practise - experience helps a lot!
3. Healthy way of thinking I would say
Unknown said…
1. Remember with all bad decisions You've made comes experience ;)
2. I hope that this articles will help You in that ;)
3. Remember, You're only a fool when You make same bad decision again, besides that, evry decision is worth to learn from.

Thanks for sharing ;)
Unknown said…
Yes! Thank You for Your comment and point of view. I bet a lot of people could learn from You - killer instinct! Sometimes You win sometimes You learn - good attitude Bro!
Unknown said…
1. Remember, only You can change that and it's not as hard as it looks ;)
2. Good attitude Bro!
3. Yes, there is something about it ;)
Unknown said…
1. Good for You ;)
2. Yes, learning from Your own experience is the best way to achive Your goals
3. good attitude bro, keep it goin'

Thanks for sharing!
Unknown said…
1. Yes, I respect that, good attitude! Hope You're going to keep that proces in goin'
2. Good to hear!
3. Repeting the same mistake all over again is nonsens - when You do that You bacame foolish - good that You're aware of that!
Unknown said…
1. Yes, good attitude Bro!
2. But if You predict some scenarios and prepere for them, then it should be easier for You to handle them ;)
3. Yes, and that's brutal :(
Unknown said…
1. Good for You! Keep it goin'!
2. True!
3. Thats what planning and preparing is all about

Thanks for Your comment!
Unknown said…
I definitely treat them like a challenge.
Of course it will change. If you have planned everything, then this situation wont be that stressful, because obscurity causes stress.
I try to avoid making such decisions. I always try to wait for one more day or just few hours to become calm, maybe as for an advice, and then make the decision that i wont regret.
Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said…
Interesting topic here, mate!
You know, it depends. Usually I treat them like a challenge, but sometimes there are situations, which make me afraid of them.
For sure! I’m always trying to do that. When I know, that I’m going to face some situation, which can be stressful I'm always trying to think what could be the consequences etc.
Again, it depends. I rarely regret anything, but when I do I think about things, that I could do better.
Cecylia said…
Stressful situations are challenging. It shows how do you react, are you calm and can you be cool-headed. I always try to calm down myself when I am in situation which is uncomfortable and stressful. That is the best way in my opinion. Planning what to do for me is good idea, because if something goes wrong, you do not know what to do and everything stars to be much worse. Decisions we make in those situations can be bad, but we should not regret them, because even if you are trying to calm down, you are under the pressure and it affects on how do you react. As I said before just try to calm down and do your job. Calming down helps you to think more clearly and make better decisions.

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