Good Stress?

You always hear about how stress is bad for you; it can make you sick, fat and even kill you. That’s true: but only when stress is chronic, or you suffer one stress after another without relief.

There is another type of stress- short term; and that can actually help your physical body, and even improve your mood and brain.

“The things that don’t kill you make you strong” Frederick Nietzsche

To strengthen and harden metal, it is by put it in a fire and then beaten- It’s “tempered” and much stronger than it’s original form. Think of a blacksmith heating and pounding the hell out of a sword..

It’s the same with your body. If all you do is sit in a chair all day, and rarely get up, or exercise, you are actually weakening. Every day that you are getting older, and doing less, you are essentially going backwards in your fitness. So going out and exercising may be stressful for you. It can even hurt.

In fact, that’s what happens when you do strenuous exercise: you get tiny tears in the muscle fibers. But that’s why you can rest, or do a different activity the following day- give yourself time to repair- and get stronger!

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

All growth comes when you push yourself out of the area known as your comfort zone. If you stay where you are, you are stagnant- and the world keeps moving forward, so you are actually going backwards!

New research says, in order to keep your brain functioning well and avoid dementia, you must not just think about the same things you do all the time, but CHALLENGE yourself. Learn a new language, take up a different activity that necessitates your making new connections in your brain. Use it or lose it, they say.

So, use stress in a way that can help you to get stronger and more resilient to the BIG stressors in life!