Two people can have opposite reactions to the exact same situation because of the internal stress they bring into it.
I was driving home one evening with my eight-year-old, Timothy, in the biggest blizzard I had ever experienced. As I inched along in almost white-out conditions, my car began to spin. I found myself doing a 360-degree turn in the middle of the road.
Do it again, Mom. Do it again! That was fun.
Personally, I was terrified. When we stopped, we were on the wrong side of the road facing oncoming traffic. It was amazing how God protected us that night.
My perception of the situation was totally different from my son’s. He had no internal stress to bring to it, so he thought the spinning car ride was a blast. I could see us getting hit, much like a drunk driver had slammed into my car when I was in college.
What is internal stress?
Internal stress is the burden of unresolved mental and emotional stress we carry with us and bring to new situations.
Often we cannot distinguish between stress caused by external events and the stress we already have within us. We tend to think it always comes from outside. The truth is that much of our stress comes from inside us, and it can easily make up more than half of the total pressure experienced in a difficult situation.
Excerpted from All Stressed Up and Everywhere to Go! by Gaylyn and Ken Williams.