Stress dependency is a very broad topic. I have seen it many times in life and experienced it myself. A person can develop a dependency on absolutely anything. Human adaptation is the number one reason why we as a species dominate this planet.
I suggest determining the current level—how you reached your current state regarding stress and adaptation. You were born, grew up, and adapted to the situation. You learned to speak the language you’re speaking. You learned to behave in a way that doesn’t make you stand out from the crowd. In other words, you became average among your surroundings.
As the well-known saying goes, children are not raised by their parents; they are raised by the village. Every person you have met in your life has contributed to your formation, whether you like it or not.
Despite being a somewhat established adult, the fact that I saw a homeless man’s head at the age of five—right on the street in the 90s in Kazakhstan, in the capital, in a good area, but there were homeless people, alcoholics, drug addicts, and I saw syringes—that has not gone anywhere. It became part of my formation. I can’t throw it out of my head because it happened. No methodology will help me forget it. It’s part of my life.
The question is: if you adapted to stress, at what stage will this adaptation become redundant? Will it become redundant? How can you determine if it is redundant or not? This is a very open question, and I suggest you think about it.
Can you live a day without stress? Can you live a week without stress? Can you live without stress at all? It might sound strange, but think about it. Look at your surroundings and see who among the people you know lives without stress, and when was the last day they lived without stress.
In life, you might live thoughtlessly, enjoying life like a child, a teenager, if you have a more or less stable situation.
But then responsibility comes, this load arrives, and you immerse yourself in stress, in the cycle. You don’t get out of it. When you’re already an adult, after a few years, you look back and don’t understand how you got into all this, how it all happened, why time passed so quickly.
When was the last time you rested? What was the most relaxing moment in the last 5 years, 10 years, your entire life?
Looking back, was any stress—the most severe or one of the most severe moments in your life—worth it?
People often worry about their situation more than the situation warrants.
I always hear from people that trivial things—like simply going to get a US visa—cause huge stress.
This always makes me laugh. I never experienced such stress from such silly things because in case of refusal, it won’t take anything from you. You spend a couple of hundred dollars, a little time, and that’s it.
But the upside is big—it’s an asymmetric risk. You spend a small amount of time, a small amount of money, and you get huge potential in the end.
This is one of those deals that need to be taken in life, endlessly. I didn’t invent it—it’s a well-known fact among large businessmen, legends of business, titans of industries. If you have an 80% probability of winning, you should take such a risk every time, because over a long period of time, you will multiply your resources, your capital hundreds of times.
The most important thing—why we are talking about stress—is that everything overshadowed by stress is actually a replacement for good pastime, quality life.
Quality life, in my understanding, is time with yourself, time with your children, time of emptiness, time alone with yourself, with God, with the Universe, with your nature.
This is more important and more valuable than anything else. We must remember this.
What is stress?
Stress is an acquired habit, I am convinced.
The stress of the land—the place where you live—includes nature, climate, and food.
Then the stress of the people: what your people went through.
As an ethnic Kazakh, I understand that the Kazakh people were oppressed several times, and we are all products of this stress, whether you like it or not, wherever you are. I have been outside Kazakhstan for five years, and I still understand that it has not gone anywhere, and it will stay.
There is minimization, of course, but it is still part of it. Fully avoiding it is impossible, in my opinion.
Family stress—the guardian system where you grew up, your mother, father, grandmother, grandfather. If there was an alcoholic in the family, this definitely affects the stress and life and understanding of the person who grew up and formed in that environment.
Patterns are acquired, and it is very difficult even in adulthood, consciously, to get rid of them. Therapy is necessary work everyone should go through to some extent, just to understand and grasp what they had in their life.
Collectively, the lifestyle where you live, what you do, the environment you revolve around—this undoubtedly affects you at the very first level. It is the first layer of your life activity.
We are in a long-trail measurement—not the first people on the planet, but descendants of descendants of descendants. We are on a very long trail, a statistical long trail, where the first people were. They reproduced, and at the end of this trail, we are. We exist in this enormous statistical impossibility. Under any other circumstances, we could not be reproduced. What is now in our life, who we are, this state of the world—this is the long trail.
There is a theory of multi-dimension, where every decision in the Universe creates a new dimension. We are now living in the 100 trillionth dimension. I suggest determining what was at the beginning of our trail—most likely limited by our parents, great-grandparents. We need to understand where these people came from, where they were going, what they were doing, why they were doing it, and how it reflected on us.
If you understand your ancestors—your father, your grandfather—and can realize who they were, what they did, it will help you understand your nature. Genetics is undoubtedly important, but trauma is also important. By rewinding back, we can start thinking from first principles and realize who we are. This is just a hint from the universe that can be helpful. You don’t have to take all of this too seriously, but having this data is an advantage.
Stress of the land, stress of the people, stress of the environment—the place where you grew up or had to live—can cause stress. But that’s not your stress; you likely absorbed it. This is called introjection: we absorb attitudes and at the right moment need to extract them and see if they are needed. This is internal work that needs to be done.
Stress of the environment and its regulation are important. For example, an IT professional may decide to quit highly paid work due to its meaninglessness and stress. This can cause a dichotomy because on one hand, all the people you grew up with would be grateful for such an opportunity, but on the other hand, you realize it’s just not yours. You should follow your instincts and desires. This can be stressful but needs to be regulated despite the high cost.
You need to prioritize yourself and make your state a priority. For example, for a billion dollars, it’s not worth going back to school and sitting through all the classes. Think and determine for yourself what state you are not willing to enter under any circumstances.
Determining how dependent we are on stress: when you enter a mindset, whatever that mindset is, it becomes the norm. We enter this state and stay there if we do not adhere to a certain protocol, do not work on ourselves. The stress norm of the people around you leads you to be like them. If you were not like them, you wouldn’t be with them.
You need to determine how to get out of this state, how to conduct an extraction, how to evacuate yourself from such a situation. Poverty in minds, stress in minds, deficit in minds—all of this is explained by a simple definition: reality does not exist. Reality is different for everyone; we all have our eyes, and we all experience a different world.
Mindset.
We need to get to the root of the stress. The problem of X and Y is that a person does not understand the source of the problem and tries to eliminate the side effects of the source. Treat not the consequences of stress. If alopecia arises, you need to treat the cause of alopecia, eliminate whatever caused it. Then the alopecia will heal.
We begin to think: maybe we feel bad, maybe our activity does not bring pleasure, maybe we live not where we would like to, maybe the surrounding people exert a negative influence on us. Thus, we simplify our life and rearrange it.
To reset yourself to zero, to factory settings, you can go to zero and start living again. Dopamine regulation is important: do not add extra dopamine, remove the phone, use a black and white screen, remove unnecessary stimuli from the environment so that we can maintain a low, non-jumping level. This allows us to focus and be creative.
Setting up the environment, setting up your signals from the outside, not adding extra stress. Long-term strategies like marathons can lead to increased cortisol levels. I suggest engaging in sprints instead of long runs, living by a flexible schedule rather than a full-time basis.
A person is not designed to work by the same schedule. If a person works for a long time by the same schedule, they may enter a circle the size of the cage they lived in. Even if they now live in a large aviary or in the wild, they can limit themselves to this circle.
Those who have worked a full workday for a long time may continue to live by a 5-by-2 schedule even if they haven’t worked a full workday for a long time. This is not something to have. If acquired, it must be immediately dropped because it can stay for life. It takes a lot of time to roll back, especially in adulthood.
Defining a stress problem entails defining the working level that will be acceptable for long-term functioning. This level should allow us to live, achieve goals, solve problems, and be productive. This is achieved through a process of reassembly, similar to resetting to factory settings. All unnecessary things disappear, leaving only what is truly important.
This process requires discipline and determination, which are important in any case. This leads to health and well-being by prioritizing self-being. By putting your being above all else, you rid yourself of everything that negatively affects you, optimizing your life.
There comes a moment when you need to stop tolerating and start acting. This is the time to cut off all unnecessary things. This is a struggle, an expenditure of energy, which contradicts the law of conservation of energy and resource optimization. But simplifying life leads to longevity.
Observing people managing large assets, you can notice a tendency toward minimalism. People get rid of unnecessary things, realizing their value is often overestimated. We are moving towards a society where experiences are valued over owning things.
This trend is actively spreading and will continue. Large assets—real estate and cars—are becoming less important to the younger generation. They prefer technological purchases and travel. Life experience becomes more important than things.
Ultimately, life experience—travel, visiting different places and events—becomes more important than material things. This is especially true for people under 40.
Simplifying life, mastering investment skills, and managing one’s resources are key aspects of successful development. These resources can vary and do not always represent material values.
There is social capital, competence capital. A person with professional skills in design may have capital worth more than a million dollars. Money can be lost, but skills and knowledge always remain with a person as long as they retain the ability to think and learn.
All these factors present in our life are tools for solving problems. Having a solution to every problem automatically reduces stress. Stress, by definition, arises when we face an unsolvable problem. If the problem is solvable, stress does not arise.
It is important to control your actions, not go beyond the permitted and your budget. Keep yourself in the right mood.
Optimizing and getting rid of your complexes and traumas helps maintain this mood. Everything unnecessary in life is a reflection of unprocessed trauma. Processing and overcoming trauma leads to a reduction in stress.
When stress goes away, space is created for other, more productive activities. Assess your perception of the world, life, being above money, and other material values.