"Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited." —Margaret Mead
What the Stress?
Did you know that Stressed spelled backwards is Desserts?
When talking about stress, it's usually in terms of stressed and not stressed.
What if there was another way?
How we experience and describe stress is a learned response...biological and psychological. The current ways we are taught about stress focus on decreasing stress. This is good to a point, but it neglects to include the realities of stressors in out life.
Relation-ships
A few years ago, I made the choice to change my thinking about relationships. What if relationships were like two ships on the water.
When you apply that thinking to your relationship to myself, then it makes it easier to look at stress as the other ship. Stress can be an adversary or a ship in your fleet working for your benefit.
The shift doesn't happen overnight, but it's worth it.
A Daily Practice: Look within
Make the time to observe when you say that you're stressed or you feel stressed. Use that moment of noticing to look within.
Are you stressed due to an expectation, lack of external validation, or something else?
Are you using the words, "I'm stressed" out of habit or reflex?
Capture your responses to these questions in a journal (video, voice, or written).Â
When you give yourself time to reflect, you help reframe your present and future relationship with stress.
This post originally appeared in On Mental Wealth, a weekly creation by Anthony Ware, Principal, AWare Catalysts
Deeper Reading
The Upside of Stressby Kelly McGonigal —> This is one of the resources I used to help me reframe my relationship with stress. I prefer the Audible version because it's read by the author.
STRESS AND HEALTH: Psychological, Behavioral, and Biological Determinants by Neil Schneiderman, Gail Ironson, and Scott D. Siegel —> One of the habits I picked up from college working on my biochemistry degree and my days as a pharmaceutical rep is diversify my sources of information. It's peer-reviewed research studies like this one that help me synthesize my unique perspective on life and business.