Being in college, we are all used to be being busy. Between work, classes, homework, extracurriculars, internships and our social lives, we all have a lot going on all. the. time. But a habit I have noticed is that when someone talks about being busy, it’s almost like we feel like we have to one up them, even if we don’t have that much going on. We feel this need to compete with each other about being completely overwhelmed which leads to this unhealthy habit of promoting being stressed.
I have had countless conservations where it is a back and forth convo of statements of being stressed. And it leads to this pattern and normalization that if we aren’t drowning in work, or crying because of how stressed we are, we aren’t doing enough. I’m not saying we can’t vent or talk about the amount of stuff we have going on, but we leave these conversations with more stressed out than when we walked in. We should try to also be able to talk about the good things we have going on in our lives do.
I know I’m guilty of doing this. The first I will say to my roommate at the end of the day is all the things that went wrong, instead of all the positive things I have going on. It isn’t even just applied to school, we constantly talk and compete about the bad things that are going on in our lives instead of also talking about the positive and good things we have.
I don’t want to bring up the good grade I got on my exam or how the upcoming week I don’t have a lot of assignment due after someone just vented to me about all the things they have to do. But we should be able to allow ourselves to enjoy and be proud of the progress we are making. We should be reflecting on how much we have done, even though we possibly have lot to do going forward. Our society does not promote the positive or how many things we are doing well, in any aspect. If we aren’t complaining about things or venting about the stuff that happened that day, it is almost like people don’t want to hear it or that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to talk about it because of how other people are suffering. And again, I am not saying we should never vent or complain, we should, its healthy, but it is unhealthy to only do that. And to only hear about it. We have to allow ourselves to be fulfilled by all the things go well in our lives as well.