Stress Attack!

Despite my best intentions – even after being sober 20 years – stress sometimes attacks me. A benefit of being in the 12 step programs that I've achieved some serenity. In fact, I pride myself on not getting upset very often. But a main component of serenity is awareness, and when I'm unaware stress can ambush me and steal my peace of mind.

And this happened last Saturday when I arrived at my office to start the day. I hadn’t a care in the world. I'd been to the gym for an hour. I'd enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. I was looking forward to dispatching a few things and then moving to other projects. But wham! The best laid plans sometimes go awry. The first thing I usually do in the morning when I arrive is access company and personal bank accounts online. And part of that process is moving money to the accounts of out-of-town managers for their expenses. But when I went to initiate the transfers some accounts were missing from the display screen. That seemed odd and I investigated further. After a brief search I found them and started the transfers. But now I wasn't allowed to transfer between certain accounts. I could feel my blood starting to boil. The heat began rising under my collar. I said unkind things out loud.

After nearly an hour on the phone with a customer service representative I was told to call the bank on Monday. The worker bee who handled front line calls didn't have the authority to access certain accounts. I was totally frustrated and for a few minutes I went through several scenarios in my head, visualizing computer nerds in cubicles in the bank's corporate office in Texas making meaningless changes to accounts, changes that made no sense to consumers who only wanted access to their funds.

 Finally, I realized I was letting an incident over which I had no control frustrate and upset me. My routine of eight years had been derailed for reasons I didn’t understand. I told the representative that I would do as she suggested and call Monday when the bank opened. And I apologized to her if I seemed impatient and upset.

Then I took several deep breathes and went into acceptance. I reminded myself that a few years back all we did nothing online because there wasn’t internet banking. We wrote checks and mailed them and business kept moving just fine. And whatever happened I would somehow get done what I needed to do. And I could do it with joy and peace in my heart.