Good Stress

You hear that stress is terrible for you all the time. People are saying that stress is making their lives miserable. But stress is actually exercise for your autonomic nervous system. It’s like trying to lift a heavier weight to increase your strength.

But the thing that is important to understand is: ONLY SHORT TERM stress is good.

Short term stress is the kind of stress that zebras experience when they are running away from charging lion. But when they get away, the stress response dissipates very quickly. It was there, now it’s gone. But that’s not the type of stress that human’s experience. Other than stress from physical causes, human stress, is mostly caused by a mindset: what we ALLOW to push our buttons.

Worrying, trying to do too much in too short of time, not having enough money for the bills, hating your body…. these attitudes create a stressful biological response in our body. I say “Worrying is like pre-paying a toll for a bridge you may never cross”.  When you repeat the “war stories” – how someone cut you off in the car, the traffic, what your boss said, what is happening in the news……. you continue this stressful mindset. The psychological stress continues longer than it would for a zebra running away from a lion. Short term stress is not bad- it’s like exercise. It comes and goes. But long term, or serial stress is what gets us sick.

I use a variety of stress relieving techniques- yogic alternate nostril breathing (a kind of meditation) and Buteyko breathing, yoga, Chi-Lel, looking at beautiful photographs, talking to people I care about… But most of all, using HeartMath’s cardio-contemplation has been powerful for me. I learned it because I NEEDED it! It shows you, in real time, how your focus is changing your physiology. And it lasts. And it has changed what I allow to bother me. I can let things go.

As Deepak Chopra said, you can eat the healthiest diet, but under stress it turns to poison inside you! Stress exacerbates any dis-ease and makes us vulnerable to illness. BUT, the best thing is, we can MANAGE stress, rather than stress managing us. But it takes practice- and it becomes a joyful activity. Make sure to get my free report and pick from a menu of stress relieving practices that work!

Remember- the BEST stress management is one you will practice. It’s best not to wait until there is an acute event that’s making you miserable – build you resistance to stress first, and the things that once bothered you won’t be an issue.