Stress, Responsibility & Power

The Stressfish has learned, at some time during its long swim through the many tributaries of the personal development river network, that nothing is more stressful than responsibility without power.

Feeling responsible for someone or some thing without having any power over them or it leads to stress that simply can't be cured, and its ongoing stress, the worst kind.

So the Stressfish has created a little game for himself.

Rather than immediately taking full, 100% responsibility for EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, as it tends to be the StressFish's habit, he has begun to apportion responsibility in percentages.

For example.

Mr and Mrs StressFish have an offspring who has been misbehaving.

Is this entirely the StressFish's fault?

It was in the past.

It FELT LIKE THAT in the past.

With the percentage game, the StressFish has come to think that actually, the responsibility over the offspring is only 50%, because Mrs StressFish owns the other half of the company that is involved in rearing the spawn.

50% responsibility feels a lot lighter already, and airbubbles of relief were had by the StressFish, just at the thought of that.

But then it went further.

Seeing that the spawn spent many hours in school and with teachers, far away from either Mr or Mrs StressFish, perhaps some responsibility might be apportioned there?

After all, the incidents all occurred at school or during time the spawn should have spent in school, under supervision, being looked after, kept busy, and taught the ways of the various fish tanks of his future.

At least 10 - 15% of responsibility might lie there, which reduces the burden for Mr and Mrs StressFish to 85-90%, and their own personal responsibility to less than it was before.

What about the spawn itself?

The StressFish thought that there may be a sliding scale of personal responsibility for the own well being as the spawn got older, with 0% when they are 0 years old, and at least 16% at age 16.

So it was that as the StressFish was thinking about the burdens of responsibility not only did those burdens begin to lighten significantly, but also a more REALISTIC viewpoint on the situation began to emerge.

And there was a turning point somewhere, where instead of suffering in silence and just stressing himself into a heart attack the StressFish began to realise that the true responsibility was a shared one, and that the problems could only be successfully resolved if EVERYONE who had a share in this got together, and started to pull their weight, and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THOSE THINGS THEY WERE ACTUALLY REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR.

As you can imagine, dear reader, a whole new way of not just thinking and feeling, but of ACTING came out of the responsibility percentages game the StressFish had invented for himself just so he would feel a little bit better and have less headaches, less often.

In fact, the StressFish was so pleased with the RESULTS as pertaining to his offspring, that he started to think like that also in terms of his company, his fellow directors, and his employees.

And what he found was that he wasn't really powerless after all; he had a lot of power and there were MANY things the StressFish could do with the power he actually had - and that was the best stress relief of them all.