I run into many people who are stressed about various things in their day to day life. Apart from me, one such person happens to be my wife. My wife has been stressed out lately and that has resulted in her asking some questions much more frequently

• When can we have a normal and relaxed life?
• When can we buy a house and settle down?
• When can you not work weekends?
• …..

I have tried to offload work off of her plate, but push comes to shove, I have to put food on the table and hold the fort. To me, the answer is quite simple…it boils down to two things:

• You got to do what you have to do to survive in the area you live
• We all want everything, but do not want to give up anything.

So, it is hard for me to understand sometimes why my wife is having issues…we live in the Silicon Valley…some of the brightest minds come to work in the Valley and everybody wants the best for themselves and their families. This is bound to make things more competitive and such….basically, a rat race. If you have to survive, you have to run the race. Or do you?

After one such emotionally charged discussion, I decided to explore the question of what factors can cause stress in people. Having paid a costly price w.r.t health in the fight for survival, I have some personal expertise in this area. But, I wanted to be fair and treat this as a new problem and see what come up. I wanted to see if I can solve my wife’s issues better than I have been doing. If she is happy, the family is more happy 🙂 So, I did some digging.

The following factors seem to be the most common causes of stress in life

• Uncertainty about various things
  • Work Life
    • unemployment, colleagues leaving, company dying, etc etc
  • Social Life
    • Friends moving away, Peer pressure, politics of social life, etc etc
  • Financial Life
    • Can I afford a home at all? Can I afford a new car? Can we handle an emergency? When can I achieve financial independence? etc
  • Personal Life
    • Am I being a good parent? Am I being a good spouse? Am I being a good friend?
    • etc etc
• Quality of Life
  • Cost of living, Commute Time, Crime, Pollution, Weather, Population Density, Integration into Neighborhood, Work Hours per day, Sleep hours per day, time spent with family per day, etc
• Health
  • Family Health, Parents health, etc
• Standard of Living
  • Nice House, Nice Car, Travel the world, etc

Over the next few weeks, I will take each of the above stressors and talk about the stressor and potential solutions to the problems that arise out of the stressor.