There's something positive about damn stress
Stress: it has positive sides!
Probably, the sensations when hearing the term stress are not the most pleasant.
Most people consider stress to be bad by definition. Many articles, reviews and books talk about this concept, emphasizing its nature, its causes, and some tips to deal with it. It is closely related to the Burnout syndrome. Of course, the social construct of the concept appeals to a completely undesirable condition, although hardly inevitable in our time.
Regardless, stress is not inherently bad. The Evolutionary Psychology believes that, in ancient times, stress helped us escape and survive other predatory species. Today, stress helps us live. It is no longer necessary for us to escape from predators, but we do experience situations in which we require the stressful phenomenon. The important thing is to know it well and not trust all the bad press it has.
Let's see some ways to take advantage of and benefit from stress.
1. Discover your own body
Decipher your emotions through your body. As an example, when you feel that your muscles are stiff, it may be a sign that the situation worries you and makes you feel out of control. If you notice that your neck is tense and you cannot relax it, it may be a sign of inflexibility. If your shoulders ask for rest, it is very likely that you should listen to them and stop for a while.
Learning to listen to the signals that the body sends us can help us to recognize some of the emotions that are guilty of your stress. Knowing these signs means being able to make them play in our favor.
2. Stress comes naturally: learn to use it to your advantage
Stress in response to an emergency or critical situation allows us to cope with the situation, even though it may sound counterintuitive.
Have you noticed? When you have to make a quick decision, stress prepares your body's responses to cope with danger, sharpening your eyesight, giving you more strength and determination or giving you greater concentration to solve the problem.
It is interesting to discover which environments are most stressful for oneself. Work (see 'Burnout Syndrome'), relationships, the agenda... Your stress can help you know which areas of your life need a change.
3. The influence of context
Try to think about your main areas or thoughts that cause you stress. You may be too involved in them. It is also possible that your expectations are too high. Stress may even appear as a result of certain limiting beliefs. Stress is a clear sign that something in your life needs to change.
When you feel stressed, you realize some strengths that you have never perceived before. The moment we are pulled out of our comfort zone, we feel strange and lost. But staying in this uncertainty teaches us things about ourselves that we did not know, for example, about our tenacity. These new sensations of self-awareness increase our confidence.
Stress, however, is a source of motivation to try to find what you are made of, and a vehicle to reach your potential.
How do people behave when they are under stress?
Well, as you may have already noticed, a stressed person is continually on the move. The root of this behavior in stressful situations is due to our evolutionary load. If you notice, we need to do physical exercise when we begin to notice that we are stressing out. Precisely this physical exercisedone rigorously and aerobically, it can help stress have a positive impact on your health.
Stress won't go away but we can get to use it to improve our day to day.
