I remember advertisements that said, stress kills.

I knew that. I knew that stress causes disease. And that we as adults need to do what we can to live at ease. Even though there are external events happening around, our attitude has a lot to do with how we get through those events.

Our life in general has a lot to do with how we see the world.

My father had a heart attack this week. Fortunately, he is recovering. He is resting comfortably.

When they were rolling him out of surgery to his room, he started dictating to his wife some things in the business that needed to be done in his absence. And she saw how ridiculous that was that was he was thinking about work while facing the possibility of death.

She said, ‘You have to stop this. This is one of the reasons you had a heart attack. You take on too much and it leaves you stressed and worried.’ And they both started to laugh.

When she told me about this, it gave me food for thought. We have to think about doing things differently.

It is rare that anyone tells us how to reduce stress when we go from adolescence to adulthood.

I was thinking about how so much technology was invented so we could do more things more quickly – microwaves, cars, computers, cell phones. These are supposed to give us more time in our day but we became slaves to these technologies. We don’t have more time. We don’t use our time more wisely.

Our technology speeds our lives up but we are not more relaxed.

I’ve been thinking about what I can change in my life to change my responses and to change my attitude and to reduce my stress.

This entire week of my father’s heart attack has been a tremendous learning experience. I see things in the shadow of stress. When my patients come in, I pay particular attention to the level of stress they carry and how they deal with it.