Is not experiencing fear or stress my superpower?
Yesterday I went to my Oncologist for the result of my CT Scan. The potential outcomes were pretty binary and radically opposed. A normal result means I’m cancer free. An abnormal result, however, would be very negative, it would mean my cancer had returned and, most likely, spread.
Earlier that day I had met with a client and at one point remarked that “I don’t do stress or anxiety”. Once we had cleared their agenda for the day, they asked me for how I can be free of stress and to give me some advice. My summary was that I may be partly innately a low-stress person, but also that I had focussed on tools and mechanisms (and learnings, and beliefs) around this.
Chief among these is my belief in the power of choice. As Viktor Frankl taught, the greatest freedom we have is the freedom to choose our response to any external stimulus.
So, as I sat waiting for that result, I observed myself and how calm I was. I also knew that, if the result was an abnormal test result, I was still free to choose my response to a cancer recurrence and that freedom is key to me being calm and unstressed.
Oh, and the result was a normal test, so I now don’t go back for the next check for six months and the next CT Scan in a year.
Anyway, the title is partly in jest, but I also do feel that living in the absence of fear, of stress, of anxiety, is very powerful and indeed, in a way, is a superpower that many people do not possess. They could, if they choose to recognise the freedom in their response to stressors and events.