Beat the Stress

byJen090

1.1K followers

11 years ago

According to Wikipedia.com, stress is a person's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or stimulus. Stress is a method of reacting to a challenge.

Looking at the above meaning of stress, we are actually reacting maybe unconsciously, to a certain challenge. This challenge may be a result of the stressor- i.e. the circumstance or incident that has arisen, because of something else, which then stresses us.

A good example is, when we get caught in a traffic, we become anxious, because we are we might be late for work. The more we are getting close to the realization that we are actually getting late for work, that's when we become stressed. Our first reaction is, we try our best to drive as fast as we can, try to cut people, look for the best route, hoping we could get to our destination quickly. We are so focussed at our goal, without thinking that our means are not really the best ways to reach our goal. This is what we call a negative response to stress. The more negative we are in approaching stress, the more vulnerable we are to failure. In this example, it may even be worse than failure; it may result to an accident.

The question lies - can we beat stress and turn it into a positive response to it? Yes, we can. Firstly, we need to ask why are we late for work? is it the traffic, or is it because we didn't discipline ourselves to wake up early in order to get to work on time? Now that we know exactly what caused the tardiness, we can then blame ourselves, and not the traffic. There is nothing else we can do, but learn from the cause of the stress. Whatever the consequence of our mistake is something that we have to face. The main thing is to learn from what happened, so we don't stress about being late for work anymore.

This example may be a common and simple one that everyone may relate to. However, we still need to remind ourselves that choosing the wrong ways to reach our goals can only lead us to one stress after another, resulting in disastrous circumstances in our lives.

It's not just about beating the @#$$#@ traffic, it's about how we approach stress, and how we learn from the stresses of life.

Have a positive and relaxing week-end, and do take care on the road.

Cheers,

Jen