Abraham Lincoln once said
“People are as happy as they make up their minds to be”. In the same way we can
say that” People are stressed as they wish to be”. They enter our mind only
when they are invited. To lead a life without stress is in our hands.
STRESS is the wear and tear
that our body experience as we adjust to our constantly changing environment.
Positive or negative feelings are created due to physical and emotional
effects. Positive influence is that stress can compel one to action due to new
awareness. Positive stress is the stress of winning and achieving. It’s called
Eustress.
Negative
stress is distress and is the stress of losing, failing,
overworking and not coping with the demand of the situation. Negative influence
which results in distrust, rejection, anger, depression etc. will lead to
health problems. We all experience this from time to time.
Stress is different to
different people. Stress situations are unique to every individual and hence
diverse and numerous. Stress comes from the demands and pressures of the recent
past and the anticipated demands and pressures of the near future. It will be
thrilling and exciting in small doses, but too much is always exhausting.
Stress can become acute and
can crop up in anyone’s life. What we can do about it is travel at the speed of
life. It’s simple and easy when you know how. Go with the flow, neither too fast
nor too slow. Keep pace with life. Different
stress situations are acute stress, episodic stress and chronic stress.
Episodic
acute stress is in those who suffer from acute stress
frequently, because their lives are so disordered. They are always in a rush,
but always late. Things tend to go wrong and they take on too much. It is
common for them to be short tempered, irritable, anxious and tense from
ceaseless worry. They see disaster around every corner. Inter personal
relationships are affected when others respond with hostility. The key to a
cure for this is quite naturally a change in attitude and must choose to
change.
Chronic
stress is the grinding stress that wears people down day after day,
year after year. While acute stress can be thrilling and exiting because it is
short term and one can go with the flow. Chronic stress destroys bodies, minds
and lives. It wreaks havoc through long term attrition, i.e; reducing ones
strength or effectiveness through sustained pressure. Chronic stress comes when
a person never sees a way out of a miserable situation like broken families,
trapped in unhappy marriages, hateful jobs etc. With no hope they gives up
searching for solutions and get used to it forgetting it is there.
Chronic stress kills. People
wear down to a final fatal breakdown. The only hope, of course, is to move out
from the stress zone physically and if that is not possible move out mentally
by get going by getting tough.
As Ted Engstrom, an American
evangelical leader and writer said “Life is about twenty percent in what
happens to us and eighty percent in the way we respond to the events”. Every
individual is unique and therefore stress too is unique to every person. No two
personalities are ever identical and as such each person’s threshold of
tolerance is also different and unique.
When people offer advice,
try to trust them and follow their suggestions. Since one cannot sort out which
worry is worse than another, sit down and make a list in order of priority.
Make a real effort to communicate with other people and imagine oneself in
other people’s shoes. Better still, take the initiative to choose to change
instead of relying too much on others to bail one out. Awareness, acceptance
and an attitude that is positive are the keys to freedom from stress and its
related maladies. Reach out, share, smile, hug and get into the rhythm of life
and realise that true happiness lies within you. Have realistic expectations,
stay with reality and strive to make things better, not perfect. Think
positively and leave the valley of doom and stress far behind you and enjoy the
journey of life.
(Ref
:Rupa sitagita and various other articles)s)
