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| (Stress, via Blue Diamond Gallery) |
This article was really well-timed in my life, because this is one of the things I've been struggling with my entire college career. Sometimes stress can't get to me no matter how had it tries--I'm somewhere far, far above my troubles, and able to work with no problems, no setbacks, etc.--and sometimes I can't stop letting stress get to me. I can't do anything, then--it's like being paralyzed by fear.
So obviously I've been trying to figure out why this happens. I'd gotten it narrowed down to a few options--and then I read this article. And everything made more sense.
These were some of the thoughts I had on the three methods they describe for harnessing "the positive side of stress":
1) "Caring for others builds resiliency against stress": I agree with this statement 100%. When I was competing as a gymnast, the best way I found to take my mind off of the stress of the competition as pertained to me was to focus all of my attention on what the stress of the competition was doing to someone else. Making someone else feel better--either by encouraging them before they were up, or cheering for them during their routine, or giving them a hug when they didn't do as well as they wanted--or they did do as well as they wanted--always helped my own stress levels. When you lift someone else up, it lifts you up as well--and it's harder not to believe your own words of encouragement when you're encouraging someone who's in the same boat as you are, or a worse one.
2) "Purpose in life reduces stress": This is also golden. I forget this a lot, but it always helps to connect what you're doing--especially if that something is something you'd really rather not be doing--to the larger scheme of your life and where you're trying to get to, or what you're trying to accomplish. It's not always easy, and sometimes it takes a sizable dash of creativity and no small amount of suspension of disbelief, but it does help, in the long run. (The important thing about this is to see the task as another stepping stone towards greatness, and not an event your greatness hinges upon; that way you don't freak yourself out by convincing yourself this is the only chance you're ever going to get. Because that's not true.)
3) "Focus on how stress can help [you] grow": Aaaaaaand the last piece of this beautiful article wraps everything up nicely. Like I said, it helps if you look at stressful situations as another stepping stone in your life--but there's a reason why I said stepping stone, and not stair. Life is not a perpetual ascension into the sky of your goals. In a lot of cases, achieving goals--especially when they're big ones--is more like crossing a river using stepping stones, and trying to pick the best way across. Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards--but without that step you couldn't have gotten to where you needed to be. If you look at stress as just another step towards where you need to go, then it gets easier to cope when it feels like all you ever do is move backwards. In theory, anyway--in practice it's a bit harder...
Wow. First of all, it was really interesting subject to read and talk about. I have never thought how stress can be something that would be any positive. I mean stress itself is not so positive, but I have never thought how you can see something positive from stress and that positive side can affect you to be a person with more growth minded. I think it was interesting to see how you feel about it a well.
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