A Pastor’s Tips for Dealing with Stress

Hello, Guideposts. I’m Doug Gamble, and I’m a pastor here in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

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On December 31, 2007, I had a heart attack. Some of the tips that doctors and the literature gave me on managing stress, the first one, which was a real eureka for me, was that I was causing a lot of my own stress. I thought it was coming from somewhere else. But when I realized, wow, I’m actually causing stress by making poor decisions, by not knowing how to handle choices forced upon me, because I don’t have a strategy for how to deal with the chaos of the kind of career I’m in, I realized I could learn it. And so I spent a year actually relearning how to deal with the stress I can’t avoid and to handle it much better right on the front end. 

And I discovered that making better choices quick and early, having prethought strategies, allow when stressful things come into my life, I can roll with life, anticipating the stress that’s coming, without getting stressed out. Four things that I learned to help me deal with stress are self-regulating. I didn’t know how to do that before, but now I actually pay attention. There’s stress in my life, but I actually can control it. And so by being attention to it, I regulate it. 

A couple of things I did out of a physical nature was I rediscovered exercise that I really enjoy. I don’t do the gym, but I love the bike. And we have great trails. And so I do bicycling now in a real passionate way. And then I’ve really always loved yard work and never gave myself permission for that either. So I have a passion in the yard, which is very good for my exercise and my mind. 

And then the final thing was something I can do anytime, and that is to enjoy music. I had sort of set music aside after a full life of it up until I was out of college, and now I include music throughout the day. It’s something I can do in the midst of a stressful situation to calm things down. 

And so those four things have really been things that have just become habits now. And they help me to manage the stress that is unavoidable and to avoid the stress I don’t need. 

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