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Person A is taking it personally and is then inventing stories about
situation.
Person B is just sticking to facts. Person B is not dredging up past and making things up about what is going on and is not jumping to conclusions about what this one missed phone call will mean to their future.
When you look at it like this, you see how ridiculous we can be, when we feel that someone has let us down. We search our past for every related incident and this makes us feel even worse and makes us project into future and all we can then see is that we are going to be unhappy forever more.
But in reality what has really happened is that we have talked ourselves in to becoming stressed and unhappy.
If we want to stop stressing ourselves with our thinking we need to get control of our wandering minds and instead stick to facts. With our missed phone call facts simply are 1. Someone told us they would phone at a certain time 2. They did not phone when they said they would. 3. We probably feel disappointed
So those are facts - rest of it we invent.
So next time you are getting stressed, stop a moment and consider what facts are and what you are inventing about those facts. You may even be able to stop stress dead in its tracks and laugh at how our own minds can be our worst enemy.
Need ways to reduce your stress levels? See Kerry-Ann Cox's latest book "10 rules you must know to reduce your stress levels". For information go to http://www.exaltedliving.com/stress.htm It covers more ways that we stress ourselves with our thinking and how to get control or your mind and become calmer.
