Stress

In our world, stress is the one thing that has overarching power. Pretty much every ailment, disease, or pain that I've ever heard of is either caused by or made worse by stress.

How do we deal with it? A friend of mine made a great observation: you can either decrease the stress or you can increase your ability to deal with it. There is no doubt that we can get a lot of things done while still maintaining an overall sense of calmness about us. The challenge is that we need to learn to do that.

It helps to get an idea of how and why stress happens. Why do our bodies get stressed? Well, it's actually an ancient response mechanism that is designed to save our lives. If we were about to get attacked by an animal, the stress response triggers us to go into a "fight or flight" mode, where we either fight off the attacker or we run. Our body only goes into this mode when it thinks that we might die.

When we experience stress in our world, it is no different. The body doesn't differenciate between a wild animal about to kill us and our boss trying to kill us. The response is the same. For some of us, our bodies are constantly releasing stress hormones into our system because our bodies are thinking that we are going to die.

And doesn't it feel that way sometimes? We get so wrapped up in our own worlds that sometimes it's as if you are trying to escape death. But what if you asked yourself some simple questions when you felt yourself get stressed? What questions would these be?

Think of how you could change your emotional state by asking something like: "am I literally going to die?" I know it feels like it, but really, you won't die if you don't make a deadline. I am not saying that your deadline isn't important. But if you take the "life or death" label off of it, the task will actually become easier and you will salvage your health.

Deep breathing is another technique that will help. It is impossible to take deep breaths and stress at the same time. Each of these activates a different body response. So practice some breathing, and add it to your day. At the top of every hour, take 3 slow and deliberate breaths. You'll be surprised at how this will creap into your day in subtle ways. Then you will be able to finish all your work AND be healthy.

In health,
Chris Janke
www.FSTworkout.com