Stress and You

Stress is part of everyday living. We encounter stress at home, in the workplace, and even within ourselves. Coping with stress is often difficult because it is done so on a continual basis. In fact, it becomes a ritual. How we deal with stress affects the way we perform, the way we connect with people, and the way we think and feel about ourselves. So you see, stress is no laughing matter.

We register, interpret, and respond to our environments via our neural and hormonal pathways. A key role of our stress hormones is to prepare us for "fight or flight" responses; we either remove ourselves from a stimuli which can potentially harm us or deal with it. Either way our body is subjected to changes which prepares it for one or the other. A point to remember with stress is that it is often blown out of proportion. We allow ourselves to be stressed out. Stress, you see, is a risk factor for heart disease, ulcers, aging, and some degenerative diseases. We often complain about being stressed out at work or at home but we really don't have a full grasp of how it does us damage.

So the main question we have to continually ask ourselves is WHY. Why are we stressed out at even the most miniscule of worries? To understand the question in a different light we have to think in terms of cause-and-effect. When we allow ourselves to worry tirelessly we increase the level of oxidative damage to our cells and this in turn causes premature aging. Another way of looking at it is that people with type A personalities ( the "I want to be in control type") are prone to stress ulcers. The answer to the WHY is simply CONTROL. We are anxious when we don't get our lives and things "figured out". We are afraid of what we don't know, what we don't expect, and we are afraid to take risks.

How then do we manage the everyday stressors we encounter daily? We simply cannot ignore them or even pretend that they never happen. One way is to put a lesser emphasis on their perceived value and outcome. What I am trying to say here is worry less. Another way is to do stress relieving exercises like slow deep breaths or condition your mind to think of another matter altogether. Regardless which practice works for you the emphasis here is to divert yourself from being stressed out. There are a lot of things we can worry about but there are ONLY A HANDFUL of things we can have control over and the power to change. Anything that we have no power over is not worth the effort of worrying. Remember this, positive thoughts breed positive outcomes and positive outcomes create positive flows in your life.

A final word on managing stress is it's a form of lifestyle change. We have to change certain aspects of our lives and what I mean by this is dealing with stress is of a lesser impact compared to avoiding it altogether. Prevention is still key, even when regarding stress. So there you have it folks. Don't sweat the small stuff, because in the greater scheme of things it's actually all small stuff. Take care guys, thanks for dropping in. Until the next post, JowelMD signing out.