Stress has a bad rep, mainly because it’s been linked with so many diseases and illnesses as we learned in “What is Stress Part 1 & 2“. In fact, it’s a necessity. In today’s blog post we find out how stress actually benefits us!
Picture This:
Imagine you’re lying in a field and taking in all the beauty around you. You’re smelling the flowers, listening to the birds chirp, feeling the soft grass cushioning your body and watching the clouds go by…
All of a sudden a huge prehistoric Mastodon comes tearing out of the bush and headed straight for you!
What’s Good About Stress
Without stress, where our body activates the fight or flight response, we’d be still in La-La Land relaxing as that Mastodon flattens us into a pancake. Stress catapults us into action so we can better survive in the world.
Now we won’t find any Mastodon’s in today’s world, but we still encounter situations in our daily lives where our minds tell us that our body must respond through action in order to survive.
Sometimes our perceptions are a bit skewed as to how dangerous the circumstance really is in reality, but nevertheless, stress is what helps us get off our butts to take care of business.
I don’t know about you but I’ve struggled with procrastination all my life. Now that I have a better understanding of how stress benefits us, I also have a better understanding of why I procrastinate. You see, I’m a recovering stress addict.
Many times in my life I’ll wait until the last minute to start a task, usually one that I don’t want to do, because I need the stress to motivate me into action! Funny, eh? Self-awareness often is.
More Ways Stress Benefits Us
We also need a healthy dose of stress to feel challenged, otherwise life is boring! Have you ever been in a job where it’s so easy you feel as if you’ll lose your mind if you spend one more day there? Or the alternative, have you ever been out of work for a length of time and realized that sitting around watching TV and eating bon bons isn’t as fun as you thought it’d be?
In addition, as a natural side effect to overcoming challenge, we get a boost of self-confidence when we succeed! As an added bonus, I’m sure that you’ve heard success comes from making mistakes and learning from them. Through learning what we need to accomplish our goals and overcome challenges, we personally grow and arrive closer to reaching our full potential.
As you can see, stress is a very useful life tool – if you know how to manage it (read 10 Unusual Stress Management Tips for a start). It’s prolonged or chronic stress that damages our health.
By the way, exercise is the #1 stress management technique. When you exercise properly and to your own physical capability, it also releases the pent-up energy your mind has created over daily stresses. Once that energy is released and you can relax fully (a side effect of exercise) solutions to your challenges just pop into your mind like magic!
Oh, and just one more thing… an important point to make about healthy stress and challenge is to watch out for when goals are unrealistic and the obstacles too great for where you are in your life right now. For challenge to be beneficial (and the stress that comes with it), one needs to be realistically optimistic about one’s current capabilities.
Have we forgotten any more ways in which stress is good for us? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!