Had a chance to catch-up with a good friend in my recent vacay back home. I’ve known my friend as someone who’s very light-hearted, jolly, life of the party, someone who causes an uproar of laughter every time we hang around. I noticed though that he wasn’t quite the way he used to, he was a bit formal and looked quite stressed out. I even teased him that he looked like a congressman bearing too much burden on his shoulder and then he answered me back that made us all laugh … “ah yes, because they took away the pork barrel already” (it sounded funny in the actual rather than reading it though). Well at least he can still crack jokes.

I asked him seriously why he was like that and he said that he is stressed out with work and that he’s been like that for 2 years now. I couldn’t really say much as I didn’t want to sound insensitive of what he was going through. Just told him in a light manner that he should just accept that work is really stressful but he has to snap out of it especially when he’s out of work already.

Thinking about it on the way back to Singapore, well life is really stressful, in my 12 years here in Singapore, I can say that stress is our staple food here. Stress does get into me every once in a while, but I would always remember a book I read when I was young, “Being Happy” by Andrew Matthews. One thing that I have carried from that book are the lines “Happiness is a decision”. It may be an off topic in itself from stress but somehow I have managed to apply that learning in different situations, even in handling stress at work. For me if I would allow stress to pull me down or to deal with it objectively is just a decision.  That’s why that book has been very influential to me in how I deal with what life offers me, whether stress, heartbreak, storm or blessing. It’s all about DECISION. As a famous quote says “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it”.

 Why wallow in stress if we know that no matter how tough our situation may be, there is a God who is willing to help us, a God who can comfort us and turn things around for us. Decide to live a stress-free life for we have a God in whom we can place our trust.

John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me”