The Real Reason You're Stressed (It's Not What You Think)

For most of my life, I carried a lot of stress, and for a long time I thought it was just caused by circumstances. Work, people, situations. It took me years to realise the real source was something much closer to home: my own expectations, of myself and of others.

It sounds simple when you say it out loud, but it's not easy to actually live by. Once you understand that expectations are the root of most of your stress, you start seeing how much of your inner world is run by an inner critic, that voice constantly judging what you do, judging others, holding an agenda about how things should be. When life doesn't meet that agenda, stress or anger shows up.

I lived this in small, specific ways for years. I used to worry endlessly about what people thought of me, how I dressed, my hairstyle, how I played basketball, how I played music. I was chasing external validation without even knowing what a good job actually looked like. The truth was, what I was doing was already enough. I just couldn't see it because I was so focused on being liked.

The way out of this, and it's genuinely hard, is learning acceptance. Accepting what is, without the constant agenda of how it should be. This is part of the self mastery work I teach, and it's not a quick fix. But when you start practising it, expectations loosen their grip, and it becomes much harder for life to upset you or stress you out.

If you recognise yourself in this, chasing validation, carrying an inner critic that never lets up, that's exactly the kind of pattern we work through in the deeper coaching and healing work I offer.