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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Gary Smalley 
 
 
Question: 
 
How do I deal with stress? And, what are its consequences? 
 
Answer:  
 
I love talking about stress, because three years ago, my stress went 
from 9.9—on a scale of 0-10—down to about 2 in twenty-four hours. 
My blood pressure dropped from what it was, about 210, down to 
about 120/70. What happened to me? I started dealing and managing 
my own stress. 
 
Did you know that you can determine how stressed you are? That’s 
your decision. It has nothing to do with your boss, your work, the 
traffic you’re in. You totally control and manage your own stress.  
 
Here is basically what stress is: stress is the gap between what you 
expect in life, and what you’re actually getting in reality. All right? 
 
Let’s say you start off your marriage expecting that your husband is 
going to hold you every day and listen to you and be gentle and 
caring—you know, kind of like another woman—and that’s your 
expectation. But what are you actually getting today? When was the 
last time he touched you? When was the last time he talked to you? 
When was the last time he’s been gentle? 
 
If that gap is widening all the time, then you are managing that gap. 
You could have ten areas in your life, major areas—children, work, 
where you live, the amount of money.  
 
 
 
For example, let’s say you’re working, and you have an expectation 
that you’re going to make $20 in whatever you’re selling at a garage 
sale or whatever—that’ your expectation—but you wind up at the end 
of the day with $1. That’s the gap: 20 to 1. 
 
There are a lot of things in our life that are gapped like that. That’s 
stress. If you allow stress to exist inside your body, it’s like an acid 
that drips on the core parts of your internal body—your heart, your 
soul, your organs—and it’s like it damages you internally. 
 
There’s two major chemicals—adrenaline and cortisol—and if those two 
drip every day on you, no wonder we’re living in a society that has so 
many illness, because so many of us are stressed to the max. But you 
can handle all of that. 
 
Here’s what I did in twenty-four hours. I made a list of all of my 
expectations. I actually wrote them out on four pieces of paper, single-
spaced. Four pages of expectations: how I expected my wife to act 
and my kids to act, and how my job was going to fulfill me—because I 
had an expectation that my job was going to give me something that it 
never did.   
 
Four pages. What I did was crumple them all up, and I actually said, 
“I’m done expecting things from life anymore. I’m done with it.” What 
I really said in my heart was, “I want God to bring me all the 
meaningful, great life that He intends me to have, and I want to get 
my value and whatever satisfies me from God alone.”  
 
And I actually threw these things on the ground and said, “No. I’m not 
going to expect from things that this world can give me anymore. But 
I am going to expect anything that God is going to give to me.” 
 
Just by getting rid of the expectations, what happened to me is that I 
totally relaxed. I closed the gap, all right. I got rid of the expectations. 
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The major reason why we get into so many difficulties with our 
children and our mate is because we have all these expectations of 
them—and the only person that I can have expectations of is me. I get 
to live every day saying, “I’m glad that I only have to work on me, and 
I’m glad that I only have to depend upon God. And I’ll take whatever 
comes.” 
 
That doesn’t mean that we don’t have dreams. That doesn’t mean that 
we don’t have goals. I’ve got a lot of goals. I just don’t have time 
limits anymore. That’s what was killing me. The time constraints with 
expectations are what almost killed me off. I had a heart attack and a 
kidney transplant in a four-year period because I was so stressed. I 
don’t do that anymore. I have great dreams. I have great dreams for 
this company that I’m involved in here. I have dreams that I want to 
see people helped all over the world. But you know what? I don’t have 
time limits on it anymore. 
 
I do as much as I can. I study, I get ready, I try my best—but I don’t 
have expectations that it’s going to do more than it’s going to do 
naturally. And so, I am in control of my stress by either narrowing the 
expectation, the gap, or getting rid of the expectation all together.  
 
 
 
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