This is a class I taught at Texas A&M, Commerce many years ago as a student invited speaker.

1. Coping With Stress

2. What Is Stress?
Ask twenty people and you might get twenty
answers! (boot camp)
What is stressful to one person may be a delight or
challenge to another.
While there are several meanings to the word
stress, the one we stress the most refers to
emotional or intellectual strain or tension. In
most cases, we mean that we are overly
strained or too tense. We define our
happiness by the lack of stress or tension. The
less stressed that we are the better we feel.

3. Two Types of Stress
Distress - this is the one we are the most familiar with. You
cannot cope with the pressures of life around you and fear
failure is eminent.
Eustress - This is the kind of stress you feel on your
wedding day. There are schedules and other pressures, but
in the middle of it all you are joyful. It is also the stress an
athlete feels when he scores or crosses a finish line.
Both types of stress place tension on your body, mind,
emotions and spirit. One is destructive and the other is
constructive.
Check out www.stresstips.com and take their stress test to
see how stressed you really are! Make sure you see the
tombstone!

4. Let’s List
Distress Events Eustress Events

5. The First Step To Cope With Stress
Given the two kinds of stress, realize that you
will NEVER be stress free!
My point is that the first step to coping with
stress is to not be fixated with stress and
imagine that it can be eliminated. To quote
an ANE author, "Yet man is born unto
trouble, as the sparks fly upward." Make
that word trouble, stress, and you can see
that it is an age old and universal issue. To
wish for a life of sitting in a lounge chair
under a Magnolia tree sipping a mint julep
reading Faulkner every day is not only a
fantasy but a source of stress since it cannot
be achieved.

6. Minimize Distress and Maximize Eustress?
Some might say that we need just do away
with all distress and PARTAY our way into
a full life of eustress.
Actually, that would be more stressful.
There is no way to totally eliminate either
one.
Neither extreme is healthy.
Balance is the key!
Seek what is called the SAFE zone in the
emotional stability program that I have
facilitated.

7. Stable And Free Eternally
Stability may seem to be tough in our constantly
changing world. Tough, yes, but not impossible.
Those who are always seeking eustress often end
up with the following characteristics; prideful.
condemning, arrogant, greedy, judgmental, etc.
This is the way they feel exhilarated or how they
keep their exhilaration. By trying to ignore
negative stress in their life they become negative
themselves
Their high ride is a fantasy bubble and if it is
popped they usually plummet into the pit of
despair.

8. When they hit the bottom they suffer from
the same traits as the people who see life as
only one distress after another.
These people characteristically are usually
fearful, depressed, bored, angry, bitter,
frustrated, full of shame or embarrassment.
They are easily hurt, bear the guilt of
everything they do.
Many people are on a roller coaster ride
between the two extremes. They need
stability.

9. The SAFE program is a 17 week program that
is repeated three times, so I cannot give you
everything involved in the program. You can
obtain a complete overview of the program by
writing or calling
SAFE Ministries
3517 NE 9th Ave
Portland, OR 97212
(503) 284-8048
Those that are in the counseling career paths
may find it helpful to them as a resource.

10. The Second Step for Coping With Stress
ASSESS YOURSELF
It has been said that we are our own worse
enemies. Many distresses in our life are
self imposed.
Often that is because we do not really
know ourselves.
We have not looked at what makes us tick.
Knowing that will help us know what ticks
us off or picks us up.
With that knowledge, we can better live
our life and make wise choices that will
give us less distress and more eustress.

11. What’s Your MAP?
Why are you in the career field you are now?
Good pay? What I love? It’s a job?
Why are you in your course of study?
Your Dad is a ______? Big bucks ahead?
You have always been fascinated with this
discipline from childhood?
Unless what you are doing is in line with
your ingrained MAP you will always be in
distress or under stress. Short periods of
eustress followed by long periods of distress
prove that you are not following your MAP.

12. So what is a MAP anyway?
It is a Motivational Abilities Pattern. It is
how you are wired from birth. When you
are following your MAP you are at your
happiest and most creative and fulfilled.
When you do something else you are
stressed and unfulfilled.
For further study, pick up Arthur F.
Miller’s “Why You Can’t Be Anything You
Want You Want To Be, published by
Zondervan Press or email People
Management International, LTD. At
pmiintled@earthlink.net. Sorry, they
gave no web page, but tell Lycos to go fetch
the company name. C];-)}|>

13. Two Examples of Missing Your MAP.
Susie is a fairly successful legal assistant in a large
law office. All day long she feels tired and
overburdened. She is very organized, but still she
feels unfulfilled and lacks a sense of accomplishment
even after several raises.
On the weekend, Susie composes music and paints.
Her scores are very detailed and wonderfully
arranged. Her paintings are like high quality
photographs showing tremendous detail.

14. Her skills can be used in both work and play, but
her MAP is more inclined to creativity and
finished products with her name on it.
At the office, she does all the work and when the
brief is put together the lawyer puts his name on it
and he gets all the glory as a wonderful lawyer.
Some of the lawyers that she does work for do not
even know her name or acknowledge her work.
For Susie to fully activate her MAP potential and
receive the satisfaction that would give, she needs
to at least work in a music or art career field and
maybe even own a music store. She has the skills
for the business end and she could display her
own work and have more energy to have her
music published from her painting sales.

15. Bob, on the other hand has received a promotion
to shift supervisor at his plant. Bob has been
with the plant 25 years and has always been the
outstanding producer and troubleshooter.
The President of the company personally
ordered Bob’s promotion. He felt he was doing
the right thing for Bob and the company.
Unfortunately, Bob has started to miss work and
complains of stomach problems. His
temperament has changed and he is having
troubles at home. He never finished his reports
on time and is always somewhere on the
assembly line instead of at his desk when he
should be there. He may be fired soon.

16. What has happened to Bob?
The company has happened to Bob. In the
Federal Government, we refer to this as
promoting a person to their level of
incompetence. We tend to blame the person
when it is actually the system.
Bob was great at details, a team player and had
a keen eye and sharp mind for production
issues. However, he was not a supervisor. He
was a supporter of the supervisor, but he had
no leadership skills and paperwork bored him.
His grammar was not that wonderful and he
was computer illiterate and all his reports were
on the computer.

17. The failure was on both sides here. Bob had
bought into the lie that you can be anything
you want to be. After all, this is America!!
He had never assessed himself because on the
line he could just be himself without having
to know why. The natural course of events is
to work hard and get promoted, so why
would he refuse? If he knew himself and his
MAP, he would have done so.
If the plant supervisors that knew Bob well
enough would have spoke up and said they
felt that the companies interest would be
better served by just giving Bob a raise the
company would not have lost a valuable
employee and Bob would not be on the verge
of a divorce and a nervous breakdown.

18. So, assess yourself. What makes you tick?
What is your real passion? Are you pursuing
it? Or are you going to be like 85% of the
American workforce that are miserable in their
current career fields, but are stuck due to
pensions, perks, and salaries?
Are you really doing what you want to be
doing or are you living out the dreams of your
father, mother or some role model? While
they had dreams for you, you might have real
nightmares.
To cope with stress, learn your MAP and
avoid unnecessary stress so that you will have
the emotional and mental energy for normal
stress!

19. The third step to cope with stress is now
to assess your stress. Now that you know
that some stress is inevitable and to seek a
stress free life is unhealthy and you know
your MAP or what makes you tick you
can start listing all the stress issues in your
life.
Take a couple of minutes and list four
things that you believe are stressing you
out!
1.
2.
3.
4.

20. Now if you put taking tests on the list, scratch
it off and make a note. Less Internet chat and
dating and more studying and tests will be less
stressing. Life is a test and by putting that on
the list you are still looking for the fantasy
land to escape responsibility for your
problems.
If some bells went off when we spoke of
MAPs, do you see some of these things as
contrary to the way you are wired or
motivated? If so, then look for ways to
replace those things with things that fit your
MAP. If your major is your MAP and they
threw in a course that is bonkers you may just
have to bite the bullet for a semester.

21. Class time only allowed for a list of four
causes of stress and I would gather that you
have a few more than that so make a full
list when you get back to the dorm before
the parties and the hazings start.
Once you have gone through your
assessment of your problems tossing out
the fantasy of a stress free life and have
made some decisions about the ones you
realize are caused by being out of your
MAP you can go on to dealing with the rest
of the stresses or problems in your life.
The fourth and for our purposes the final
step to cope with our stress problems is to
SIFT

22. Single out the real problems!
Isolate the problems which are the
most urgent!
Find _____ absolute best solution!
Take action as soon as a wise
decision is made!