Do we need to learn how to prepare for adversity and read self
help books and carry out self help activities?
(written by moderator)
(pardon the grammartical error if any)
When people suddenly face with accidents and sudden problems which
they have no experience, they will feel stress. one reason is
because they do not know what is the situation going to be. They
cannot predict and they have no knowledge. Therefore the outcome to
them becomes an unknown. When that happens, they can only
anticipate and have to be constantly monitor which is a stressful
thing. They by then should be feeling discomfort in terms of
worrying in their body. This pain will then be translate and mix up
with the being obsessed with the thoughts of the incident and this
will create an exaggeration effect where they think that the
problem is a serious problem.
Lets say there is a occupation accident on one of the workers and
it may be caused by the error of you who is the supervisor. No
previous experience and no idea what is the consequence. So many
things to think about like the workers safety, your legal
consequence, your job consequence, how they family of the injured
worker will take what actions towards you and what your superiors
is going to treat you.
Why cannot people handle such questions? The reason is that nobody
will usually imagine what they should think in times of accident or
some of the things that are happening in the world that are not so
related to them. Instead, people do leisure activities, have fun
and party all night because these are pleasurable activities. The
downside of not learning how to deal with adversity and learning
what is adversity is that when adversity really happens, people do
not have the means and knowledge to handle them.
The counter argument for people who just play and enjoy most of the
time is that in life, adversity really seldom happens. It still can
happen to anybody but it is just that it is seldom. Hence, this may
be the reason why people may think it is not necessary and
efficiency to really study it. They may think that when adversity
comes, they may indeed exaggerate the situation and become unduly
stress but most of the time, there will be still automatic recovery
and they will still be alright in the end.
So, the argument that people need to learn about stress management
seems unimportant because the stress experience does not kill in
the first place. It also depends really. A lucky person does not
really need to undergo stress management while a unlucky needs a
lot.
Personally, I have used the visualization method to simulate
various problems in life. I have also try to learn about what is
the correct belief system of life, what is reality really and what
is right or wrong, what is the happening in the world, and what are
the lesson we can learn from news around the world. Basically, by
learning more about our beliefs, attitude and values and trying to
understand them, to seek for truth will equip the brain with right
knowledge so that when stress come along, you will understand the
things that happen in it. For example, when a boss decides to sack
you, how should you view it. If you have read news before, and try
to understand it and put yourself into various cases, you might
learn that firing people is quite common so it can happen to you
one day. You might also understand from learning economics that
reducing work staff is actually a tool for increasing profits
sometimes. You might also study before the value of loyalty and so
has a more accurate opinion of whether the firing of your job has
any moral sins done by your boss.
The point is that in order to handle stress and misfortune in life
well, you have to know all the various components of the stress
case like the biological factor, the sociological factor, the
ethical factor, the nature of reality. If you understanding of each
factor is wrong in some sense, then you will not handle stress
correctly. If you do not know and learn about stress management,
then you will definitely be more stress.
Most people actually do learn about stress management through
common media sources like radio, newspaper, television and talking
with people encounter. Books are also available and is in fact more
useful because there above mention sources cannot contain too much
information to teach you. books on the other hand, can devote 300
pages of information to teach you.
However, most people do not really study and prepare for adversity
or bad events in life because the truth is that most of the time we
are in good times. Hence, it could be argued once again that there
is no need to really read on books on self help, we will naturally
mature and be wiser as we grow older.