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Recently Sarah and I were having breakfast with a new friend of ours in Palermo, Buenos Aires. All of us were enjoying omelets and sipping coffee at a nice sidewalk café watching the world go by. We spent the time getting to know each other better, talking about dancing tango and making art, and about how much we love spending time here. Despite lacking some of the creature comforts of back home, Argentina is a great place to be. The economy certainly helps, as it is very easy to take it easy when you have bank account full of American dollars or Euros.
Our life wasn’t always like this, and I don’t expect it to be like this forever. We have the luxury of being able to travel with the means and the time to do so. Even since we started living the life of nomads we’ve experienced some ups and some big downs. I know that someday our circumstances will inevitably change, but one thing that will remain the same is how we are affected by them.
As long as I can remember, I have always been less affected by stress than those around me. I remember keeping calm in cars full of screaming kids, not getting worked up over setbacks, and just keeping my cool in situations that where others seemed to lose it. I remember first learning the definition of “lackadaisical” when a teacher used it to describe my apparent lack of worry about something that was most likely really, really important. For what it was worth, I always seemed to share my outlook with others whenever possible.
For example, when I was in college at the University of Texas at Austin, I went to the campus store to buy a new computer. Upon learning my name, the student technician that was assisting me said, “Brian King? I once worked with a guy named Brian King.” We figured out that at one point a few years earlier, we were both working at the same Taco Bell location. I didn’t remember him, but he clearly knew who I was.
Have you ever worked fast food? I spent my first few years out of high school working wherever I could. I stuffed tacos and burritos, flipped and flame-broiled burgers, I even cooked and delivered pizzas. Generally speaking, working in fast food can be extremely stressful. The pace is relentless, there is almost always a line of customers inside the store and in drive-through and all expect fast service. When things slowed down, management pressured us to look busy even if we weren’t. It was not unusual for me to be pushing a broom across a perfectly clean floor because there was literally nothing else to do. Not to mention that all of this activity was typically carried out in a steamy hot kitchen while wearing some form of polyester uniform. I made $3.35 an hour and was grateful for it. Not a lot of doors swing wide- open for high school dropouts. I worked with an interesting assortment of retirees, ex-convicts, current convicts on work release, or and general unemployables, and occasionally there was a high school or college student. The computer technician was one of those students.
As he was going over the details of my new computer, the technician told me that the reason he remembered my name was because of something I had said to him. One day, during a particularly tough shift he was feeling a bit overwhelmed balancing work with school. Apparently, I said something like, “Don’t worry about it, it’s just Taco Bell” and reminded him to keep his eyes on the bigger picture, like that sweet student technician job waiting for him in the near future. Honestly, I have no idea what I said to him after “it’s just Taco Bell,” but whatever I said stuck in this guy’s head long enough that he thanked me for my advice years later. He had momentarily lost sight of his long-term goal in the midst of taco stress.
Having something to look forward to can really help us endure a lot. Yeah, those jobs were stressful. School was stressful. Hell, life was stressful. At one point during this period of my life, I slept bottom bunk with my best friend above me at his family’s trailer in the country. The few belongings I had were stored in another friend’s garage. I worked a series of low-wage jobs and took classes at the community college, but I never let it get to me. I find it funny that when I meet people now, they know me as an educated comedian/speaker with a loving partner and an incredible kid. When I talk about handling stress, it’s because I have handled some stress.
There were a few things I can identify that helped me keep my composure during that time in my life. First, I had a goal that I was working toward. College gave me a sense of purpose and, as I have since learned in researching happiness and resilience, having a sense of purpose goes a very long way. As long as I knew I was making progress on my education, I felt I could endure anything life threw at me. Second, I was resourceful. When my car broke down and I could not afford to get it fixed, I did my class readings on my bus commute. Luckily, when I briefly became homeless, my friend’s parents offered me their home, but I had a plan to sleep on campus in all-night study halls and shower at the gym if they hadn’t. As long as I cleaned up, wore a backpack, and looked like a student, I imagined it would be pretty easy to get by on a large university. I never had to put this plan into action, but just imagining that I had a possible solution helped me cope. Third, I knew that if things truly got unbearable, I had a safety net. At any time, my parents would have welcomed me back into their home. My strong sense of purpose, willingness to use the resources available to me, and having a plan for the worst-case scenario kept me from feeling all that stressed out throughout a very stressful time. Again, every single one of these components—goal pursuit, problem-solving, and planning for contingencies—are functions of reasoning.
All of this was through my mind as we talked. Without knowing what I did for a living, our conversation ultimately came to the subject of managing stress, and the importance of one’s mindset on regulating our stress response. I paid for breakfast and Sarah and I said goodbye to our friend. She was on her way to a tango class and then was going to catch a ferry to a beach in Uruguay. Sarah and I continued our day with a stroll to Plaza Inmigrantes de Armenia, a central park of Palermo with a great playground for our daughter, and a fun carousel ride, and lots of street vendors. There were a few selling books and I wondered if my book, The Art of Taking It Easy, would be translated into Spanish.
Resilient people approach life by thinking and planning; they see their problems or adverse events as temporary and or solvable. That was definitely the case for me in my early college years—I felt that my situation was temporary and under control. And, in my case, it was.
