While there's a lot of research that has gone into a stress and how it affects us, most of us think about stress in a negative way and how it makes us feel and what changes it causes. So we tend to deal with stress and give it a negative connotation, but we all need stress in our lives for us to be able to grow as human beings, for us to be able to take on the challenges.
Say What?
Let's face it, as human beings we look for the path of least resistance. And if that's what you're looking for, then this post and the work that we're doing is probably not for you. But if you're somebody that wants to dig in deep and deep dive with me and understand how stress works, in your body and understand how you can effectively manage it, then you're in the right place. We all need stress to grow beyond where we are. Whether it's to get better at our job, at our career, at our hobbies...Whether we want to be better moms, dads, siblings, you name it, stress is required for us to push ourselves to become the best that we can be.
How do we do that? We focus on eustress. That is the term for positive stress. That's where you're in a state where you feel energized and focused and work feels effortless. While there will always be distress (the negative stress), if you can turn it around and create that feeling of eustress and use it to your benefit, that's when we find the fun in life. It takes a lot of purposeful practice. Initially you'll have a lot of resistance. I still have my two little guys, I call my angel and my devil that while sitting on my shoulders, sometimes wreak havoc. There are days when Mr. Devil is feeding me with a self consuming, defeating voice, where I feel like I can't figure stuff out. At that moment I know I have to detach and look at what's going on so I can understand that it's just a nagging voice. What Mr. Devil says is absolutely not true.
So when that happens, and if you're able to relate to those nagging, self defeating voices, then I encourage you to practice detach, prioritize and execute. I also encourage you to look further into things like belief. Believe that that no matter what, if I persevere and stop listening to Mr. Devil and start listening to Mr. Angel, there isn't anything that I can do. So I turn what is distress, the negative stress, into eustress.
Most people stay in distress trying to figure it out. I encourage you to stop that and immediately go into practicing detach, prioritize, and execute (see The Single 3 Step Process to Minimizing & Eliminating Stress post from Sept. 23, 2019)
Staying in distress causes fatigue, causes exhaustion, causes burnout and may affect your health. I've experienced every single one of those things, and it's my wish for you that you don't.
The fact is we do need stress in our life to grow, but we want to make sure that it's the beneficial stress, eustress. So if you're in a place where you're finding yourself where it's always distress, that negative stress, with fatigue, exhaustion, burnout, ill health, make the choice to focus on eustress and the strategies for turning distress around:
Detach
Prioritize
Execute
Believe
Take action
Persevere.
If you want to know more and how I can help you or your organization, go ahead and reach out to me through my website, http://SamanthaHorwitz.com
Happy practicing!