The Insane Life Coach

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

I’m sure you are familiar with quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” I have seen this attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and probably Dr. Ruth so who actually said it is anybody’s guess, but it’s an interesting little quote, and one I use with clients from time to time.

I’ve had a fairly stressful few days as you can imagine if you have read the post below. I justified it somewhat by thinking about the Holmes-Rahe Scale. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the Holmes-Rahe Scale grades events in our lives according to the stress impact they are likely to have on us. In and of itself it’s a really great way to increase stress levels. Imagine coping with some adverse event really well, but on checking the scale realizing that you should be feeling much worse than you do! That’s not particularly helpful in my opinion, and neither is the scale.

I’m sure you have used phrases like “My boss stresses me out” or “This weather stresses me out” or even “I’m stressed senseless because Fox TV refuses to show 24 this year because of the writers strike, and my life is a meaningless sham without it” I know I have.

People use such phrases without even stopping to think about them and seldom do the recipients bat an eyelid because it’s become every day language. Let’s face it; modern society is stressful, right? Wrong, wrong and thrice wrong. It is no more stressful living in modern society than it was living in Victorian society or Jacobean society or even Elizabethan society for that matter. I’m just showing of with my knowledge of English history now, sorry.

I often tell life coaching clients that the only stress we feel is the stress we impose on ourselves. That’s also true for smug Life Coach’s that sometimes forget that they are not immune to the laws of nature.

There’s one simple way to demonstrate what I mean. Have you ever felt stressed by circumstances and somebody else was relaxed about the exact same circumstances? In that case, by definition, it can’t be the event that is stressing you, but the interpretation that you are placing on it. There is no tangible entity called stress. You can’t bottle it up, put it in a cupboard or nail it to the floor. It’s more nebulous than a Paula Abdul critique when she realizes a singer is crap on American idol. It doesn’t get much more nebulous than that.

So having established stress is in the eye and even the ear of the beholder, you’d think I’d have it cracked by now. Well to some extent I have, and normally I run at about 15% of the stress levels I did four years ago. Occasionally though relapse and forget the basics. In terms of conquering stress there are some obvious don’ts. Don’t drink alcohol to excess, don’t drink caffeine to excess, don’t smoke and don’t sit around dwelling on negative thoughts. After my mum passed away, I drank too much (alcohol and caffeine) and fretted too much. Fortunately, I don’t smoke although I did think about starting just to get a matching set. I do know better, but my habits of a (hopefully previous) lifetime kicked in. Feel stressed = drink alcohol to sleep, drink coffee to wake and worry about it all into the bargain.

Did it ever work, did it ever make me sleep better, feel more awake and feel sorry for myself less? Of course it didn’t, it made me feel worse. What was that definition of insanity again?


So on Sunday I decided to break the cycle. Firstly, I cut out the alcohol, I reduced the coffee to one cup in the morning, and most importantly, I started to focus on the positive again. I’m not going to give myself a hard time for slipping back because it was a learning experience and that is what life is all about. And anyway, giving myself a hard time would just stress me out.