Stress to the Max

At the beginning of this week, I was stressed. I had projects and tests for so many classes happening all at once, and it seemed as if everything was due by Wednesday. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get it done. Fortunately I did, but that doesn't impact what I learned this week, or should I say relearn.

Last semester, I watched a Ted Talk that talked about stress becoming our friend. (I posted it on the class LinkedIn, if you haven't watched it you should). The speaker talked about how after ten years of experience as a health psychologist, she just realized that she had been teaching stress management incorrectly. She, along with many of her colleagues, have been teaching that stress is bad, end of story, and that we need to avoid it by the plague because it can kill you. She began to think, however, why we have stress and what does it do to the body. Studies were designed and conducted, and she discovered something fascinating. It isn't the stress that is killing us but how we are reacting to it. By simply changing our attitude towards stress and seeing it as something that helps us, we see negative health side-effects turning to positive side-effects. All it takes is a change in our perception.

We all live stressful lives, the thought of trying to avoid stress leads to failure. What we need to realize is that when we our stressed and our heart starts racing, and we start sweating, it is really our body preparing ourselves for life's challenges. We need to look forward and tackle our challenges, realizing that stress is our friend, and our bodies coping mechanism to help prepare us for our endeavors.