We experience this every day. From family, to school, to work and even friendships, the smallest things in your life can be stressful. Did you know that a little stress can actually be a good thing?
Reduce it or Accept it?
Stress is completely normal, healthy and necessary. It’s the little warning in your head telling you to make some adjustments in your life, so that way you don’t need to feel this constant anxiety. It’s a behavioral adjustment to change and without it our bodies wouldn’t be able to perform its functions properly. The key is finding the right amount of stress for your daily life because let’s face it, we are always going to be stressed!
The Magical Amount
We’ve always been told, the less stress the better. We’ve always been the people who find ways to reduce stress, because we can all agree it’s not a happy feeling. We try medicines, sleep, yoga and other things to reduce it and most of the time these things work. But, have we ever thought about embracing it in order for it to go away? The physiological reactions we see that we call stress are preparations for fight or flight. Therefore, it’s ideal that we only try to maintain optimum levels of stress instead of trying to get rid of it altogether.
Now What?
Now that we know exactly what stress is, what do we do in order to remain at a level we are comfortable with? The first thing we do is analyzing ourselves on a day we felt great and ready to take on any task. You were getting things done, crossing things off your to-do list and at the end of the day you felt accomplished and pumped. The question is, how did you maintain a leveled head? Was this because you wrote down a to-do list the night before? Was this because you double checked certain due dates and made plans according to what you had to do? Once you figure this out, you simply take a breather and figure out what steps you should take in order to get back to that point.
All in all, stress really isn’t a bad thing. It keeps you productive, competitive and it also adds to a sense of security that maybe your life could use a little adjusting. It’s completely normal and it shouldn’t be something made out to be an unnecessary feeling, because our brain picks up on these feelings for a reason.