You Were Created to Handle Stress Sucessfully, Part 1 of 3

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Deborah Skriloff, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Summary: We are born to create, to think deeply, love profoundly, and act purposefully. In living this life we are sometimes called upon to do things that are difficult and perhaps stressful.

However, our habit of occupying our minds with trivialities, or our hearts with worry, instead of doing the work that progresses our career or our happiness is self-sabotage in full force.

“I believe in the evolution of the mind, the heart, and the soul of humanity. I believe in improvement. I believe in growth. There is nothing quite as invigorating as being able to evaluate and then solve a difficult problem, to grapple with something that seems almost unsolvable and then find a resolution.”
Gordon B. Hinckley, Stand for Something, 2000, p. 62

When, in the name of avoiding stress we use our ability to think and love deeply to distract us onto things that require neither depth of thought or are of little consequence, we do ourselves a disservice.

I know I’ve allowed this to happen to me. I have awakened to the distraction sometimes too late to prevent my own stumble and bruising and have found the need to find my way back through the briers and thorns laid by my own pride.

The noise of the world can overwhelm us, distract us and drag us off of the path that leads to our greatest happiness. However, it is only from that path where we can have true perspective and can think clearly and creatively about how to overcome the obstacles and roadblocks of our lives.

The Most Stressed Out Generation
One of the things that distract us are feelings of overwhelm and stress. Millennials have officially become the most stressed out Generation of American, with their parents, Generation Xers, running a very close second. We live in a time of demanding jobs, divorce, single parenting, violence, financial woes and career uncertainty. There is a 24/7 endeavor to keep up with texts, emails, and Instagram threads and record high rates of anxiety and depression. Stressful situations abound. Perhaps even this article is beginning to stress you out a bit.

For years, psychologists have written articles, taught classes and workshops teaching people that stress is harmful and should be avoided, reduced and managed. In her book, The Upside of Stress, Kelly McGonigal, health psychologist, shares with us a finding that turns that belief on its head. Studies show that while high levels of stress increased the risk of dying pre-maturely by 43% this was only true for participants in the study who also believed that stress was harmful to their health. People who reported high levels of stress but who did not view their stress as harmful had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study, even lower than those who had reported experiencing very little stress.

The researchers concluded that it wasn’t stress alone that was killing people. It was the combination of stress and the belief that stress is harmful. The researchers estimated that over the eight years they conducted their study, 182,000 American may have died prematurely because they believed that stress was harming their health….. That would make “believing stress is bad for you” the 15th leading cause of death in the United States, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS, and homicide."

So the question you have to ask is, can changing how you think about stress make you healthier? The answer would appear to be yes. If you change your mind about stress and how you think about stress, you can change your bodies response to stress. – End of Part 1

Sources:
Loria, Kevin, “It’s official; millennials are the most stressed-out generation” , February 6, 2015
Fry, Richard, “Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation”, April 25, 2016
McGonigal, Kelly, Ph.D., The Upside of Stress, Avery, second edition May 5, 2015