How to Thrive on Stressful Days

Keep your sanity when you can't control anything.

I wrote for a newspaper after college and the stress sometimes felt like it would destroy me.

My editors assigned stories or told me to scrounge something up. They provided looming deadlines, but rarely the means for achieving them. Writing wasn’t the problem — I knew how to tell stories. If all else failed I fell back on the reliable who, what, when, where, why, how format — no artistry or panache required.

The problem was that good journalism requires sources, facts, and observation, and forcing reality to yield them before my deadlines was a constant challenge.

Some days the stress felt erosive; my heart hammered in my chest as deadlines drew near. How do I make a senator who doesn’t want to talk call me back? How do I get that ornery cop to comment on the record? Is there a way to look at those shady contracts before sundown?

In the back of my mind was this fact: If I fail, I’ll have angry editors to face.

So what to do?

The hand of reality can’t be forced. Sometimes you’re dressed down for failing to achieve the unachievable. Such is life.

But how do we inhabit this reality? How do we endure the stress of being responsible for things we can’t control?

I returned to my apartment one day, feeling despair over my inability to bend reality to my will. Maybe I’m just not good enough, I thought. I’m not cut out for this kind of stress.

I wandered to my bookshelf and pulled down Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I flipped through for a few minutes until I came to this:

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life…If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.”

Maybe the gods, I chuckled. But what about my boss?

But for some reason I took this message to heart. Whenever I felt the stress of a looming deadline I recruited a mental mentor to keep watch and give me feedback.

Inevitably things would go like this:

Andrew: I have so much to get done in the next three hours! I don’t think I can get it done.

Mentor: You can’t control the outcome. Just concentrate on the next thing. Give only enough thought to the big picture to set a course.

It sounds prosaic, but it’s not. The human mind — my mind — often half neglects the present while dreading the uncontrollable 2-10 steps in the future. This serves neither the present nor the future; it makes failure more likely.

Application:

My editor interrupts as I’m finishing a story: Stop what you’re doing. There’s been a shooting. Go to the crime scene and write it up. The deadline is in two hours.

What do I do? Just the next thing.

Step One: Gather your things. Don’t think about the rest.
Step Two: Go to your car and start driving. Don’t think about the rest.
Step Three: You’re stuck in rush hour traffic, crawling. If traffic doesn’t ease up you won’t get there in time. Your eyes move to the clock and your stress levels build.

Another of Marcus’s lines is at the ready:

“Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer.”

He’s right. What am I afraid of? Failure? Chastisement? Loss of a job? What does it really matter? You can’t control these things and the worry does you no good. Just do the next thing as best you can. Concentrate!

Step Four: While sitting in traffic I search my mind for what I know about these cops, preparing to build rapport.
Step Five: I arrive and talk with the cops. I find a witness and get their story. I find out who the police PR guy is so I can get a statement later.
Step Six: Traffic has let up and I rush back in time to write and file my story.

It could have gone differently. I could have failed. But that doesn’t change what must be done now, and the unimportance of what you can’t control.

There Is No Sane Alternative to Now

The alternative to a succession of next things done well is a seething resentment of reality. Or anxiety and dread. When you only do the next thing, in the only moment you have, with absolute focus, it’s soothing. The action crowds out the anxiety, and the focus makes you better at everything you do.

We can always narrow life down to right now. What actionable problem do you have right now? Address it right now or leave it alone.

I’m often surprised to find I have no actionable problem. I’m worrying about something that hasn’t come to pass, and may never come to pass. I might not even understand what I’m worrying about!

This strategy made me a better journalist, but every day it leaves me a better, less stressed-out human.

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