Personality
👉 The more sensitive we are, the more opportunities we have to experience stress
Sensitive individuals experience more, so they need more attention and care to keep themselves within acceptable tolerances. The food critic’s meal needs much more attention and care to be “acceptable” than a meal to satisfy your average Joe.
The problem is that this higher need creates more opportunities for the sensitive individuals to experience stress: if the food critic and the average Joe go to the same restaurant, the food critic has many more demands to just meet the threshold for an acceptable meal. It’s therefore much more likely the food critic will go away with his needs unmet vs. Joe.
The same is true more broadly. An individual’s level of sensitivity can make the same environment more stressful, pound for pound. As we mentioned yesterday, too much stress can compromise a person’s ability to adapt to their environment, by making them hypersensitive or overly rigid. This can create a feedback loop ➰: sensitivity breeds stress, which increases sensitivity, which increases stress…until suddenly our tolerances become so narrow that it’s difficult to function in the world. Our food critic stops going to restaurants because no meal can meet his needs…
🤔 Reflection of the Day: Think of a situation in your life where your sensitivity has led you to need more and therefore caused you to experience more stress?