30

relax the pressure you put on yourself and others

idea

Pressure is a feeling of heaviness that you put on your own shoulders, which weighs you down. A typical thought is, “I’m so stressed out.” We often place demands on others, and ourselves with terms like “need to,” “have to,” “ought to,” “must,” or “should,” all of which escalate pressure. The real problems arise when our demands are unmet because believing that any expectation must be met leads to feelings of frustration and anger. You can reduce stress by learning to change demands into preferences.

Hannah, Phil, Eli, and Ali

Hannah believes she should give up all of her after-school activities so she can succeed academically. She thinks her friends ought to understand this and stop asking her to do social things.

Phil thinks he must start every game, that his teammates should support him, and that his parents should understand how important football is to him and stop nagging him about chores.

Eli believes he has to work out every day and worries when he thinks there won’t be any time for it. He thinks his friends should stop razzing him for this.

Ali thinks she must be a size smaller than she is and thinks her parents have to stop trying to get her to eat.

When their demands are thwarted, Hannah, Phil, Eli, and Ali all experience frustration, annoyance, and even anger.

your turn

Do you feel stress and pressure from the demands you place on yourself and others? In what ways do you use the words “should,” “need to,” “have to,” “ought to,” and “must”? Write down the demands you place on yourself and others.

Examples:

• My parents should let me keep my phone on all night.
• My parents must let me hang out with my friends after school.
• My teacher needs to stop giving us crazy amounts of homework.
• I have to make varsity.
• I ought to be able to eat what I want.
• I should have gotten the part I wanted in the play.

Write your demand statements below.

I should… _______________________

I must… _________________________

I need to… ______________________

I have to… ______________________

I ought to… _____________________

I should have… __________________

more practice

By replacing demands with preferences, you can remove unnecessary pressure by replacing anger, annoyance, and frustration with neutral acceptance. Instead of “should,” “must,” “need to,” “have to,” “ought to,” or “should have,” consider trying the following:

It would be nice if… ____________

I would prefer that… ____________

I would like to… ________________

I wish that… ____________________

Example: Instead of thinking, My parents should let me keep my phone on all night, try thinking, I wish my parents would let me keep my phone on all night.

Does the anger, annoyance, or frustration decrease when you replace a demand with a preference? Circle one answer: YES NO

For each demand statement you wrote down earlier, replace the demanding word with a preference from this list and see how it impacts you.

Revised Non-Demanding Statement	Impact

This week, take demand statements out of your vocabulary and replace them with preference statements: “It would be nice,” “I would prefer,” “I would like,” and “I wish.”

The Bottom Line: Reduce pressure by replacing demands with preferences.