Stress (part 2)

I love the Seinfeld episode where George is acting like he is all upset and mad while going through his work day with the Yankees. He then explains to his friends that when you act mad, people just assume you are really busy dealing with difficult issues and they tend to leave you alone. Perception becomes reality, basically.

It reminded me of a lesson I learned while playing basketball in 11th grade. (I beg forgiveness on the sports analogy, but I am doing it anyway.) We were playing Crookston, a school five times bigger than us, and they were killing us with their full-court press defense. We couldn't get the ball up the court.

I was a forward at the time, so I had little to do with bringing the ball up the court. Out of frustration, I asked the coach to let me try playing guard. I was nowhere near the ball handler as half our team, but I had an idea. I was going to get the inbound pass, have all my teammates clear the court, and deal with my defender one-on-one.

I took the first inbound pass, pivoted into my defender, facing him directly, calmly pausing with a dead-pan, calm look on my face, and slowly dribbled my way up the court. He had no idea how fast my heart was racing in utter panic. I looked calm, but I was faking it.

It worked. Although I was pretty convinced he could have stolen the ball away from me anytime he wanted, after three of four times up the floor, he was convinced I knew what I was doing. He backed off and every time up the floor gave me more and more room to handle the ball.

That may be the only lesson I ever learned playing basketball, but it has stuck with me and I always refer to it when I am in a stressful situation. Stay calm, take a breath (as Ming and Marna pointed out in the comments to the last post), and essentially, fake it.

Although most stress is self-generated, no matter what you do, it will always exist. As a kid working my first job at the newspaper, my brother Bubba explained to me how he loved the stress of meeting a deadline. He thrived on it. Stress happens, but how we deal with it is completely in our control.