Stress vs. Worry?

Stress?

So, earlier today, the following flowchart came across my Twitter feed.

http://lifehacker.com/this-flow-chart-tells-you-when-to-worry-about-anything-1638610395

This is a subject that I have thought about before, so it's not a new subject for me.  One thing that I am famous for (in my own mind), was how I answered a question in an interview:

Question:  "What separates you from other candidates who are applying for this job who have similar qualifications?"

Answer:  "Stress doesn't stress me out."

Of course I had to qualify my response, and I feel like I was able to do so, primarily because I have given this thought in the past.

Stress is definied by Merriam Webster in the following way:

Well, stress as I define it, is:

An emotional response to a challenging situation.

I answered the question as best as I could.  I tend not to get stressed out by challenging situations at work.  Long hours?  Difficult people?  Deadlines?  Challenging problems?  None of these have ever been an issue with causing undue emotional hardship that gets in the way of me getting my job done.  I feel like I've basically grown into a person who doesn't have emotional responses to challenging situations for one main reason.

TrivialPacket's Law of Stress

Having an emotional response to any challenging situation does not help to alleviate the challenging situation AT ALL and in fact it MAKES IT WORSE.

Stress can be a healthy response to challenging situations in small doses.  I'm not saying that it's necessarily normal to not feel stress, only that I don't believe that stress effects me in the same way as I see it affecting others, and I don't believe it has much value.  Sometimes, feeling the way I do about stress makes relationships difficult, as people I care about who tend to stress out about things have at times perceived my lack of stress as lack of caring, which is not one in the same.  I am not without emotion.  Frustration.  Annoyance.  Anger.  These are also all emotional responses to challenging situations and people and I am certainly not immune to these feelings, but I focus on identifying these feelings and moving by them as quickly as I can, because...well see above.

What about worry?

Worry, however is something I don't do.  Forget that.  Worry is defined by Merriam Webster as:

I personally define it as:

An emotional response to something that has not happened, may never happen, or where you do not know how it will happen.

I can say, with very little doubt, that worry doe not solve problems.  It is not beneficial.  Sure, in some edge cases, someone may use worry as a motivation to make a change, and in that case, sure it could be perceived as useful, but it wasn't.  The worry wasn't useful.  The will to make a change was and that, is what should be celebrated.  

Any time spent worrying about most anything is wasted time, it doesn't affect the outcome of what you are worrying about, it may never happen the way you're worrying about it, and it only takes away from the experience of living in the present.

Are either of these worth it?  No.