stress

By Yours Truly

I don’t stress often, but when I do… Honestly, I stress all the time. While most of us need to stop stressing, most of us need to stress more. Stress isn’t bad, our vocabulary is. Talking about stress can be confusing, but it’s because we’re using the wrong words. There are two different types of stress (and peer pressure). Eustress is good, and distress is bad. 

Or should I say, Eustress is positive and distress is negative. Eustress is the good stress that pushes us to accomplish our goals. It makes me go to bed on time at night, and wakes me up in the morning. It gets me through the last part of my workouts when I feel like quitting. I wouldn’t be writing this article right now without it. It keeps us productive and provides the motivation we need to be successful in life. 

But when we can no longer manage our eustress, that’s when it becomes distress. This is the stress most of us are familiar with. It’s when the challenge at hand becomes too much to deal with. Distress literally kills us. For some of us it creates diseases that kill us right away, and for others it’s slowly taking years away from our life.  

I could write a book on stress, but since most people don’t like reading I’ll try to keep this short. It’s not so much about knowing about stress, but more so managing it. Even if you know you should stress, it’s hard not to some times. Below are few tips with managing stress. Don’t ever tell someone “stop stressing”; just teach them how to do it. 

Plan and Prioritize 

If you would plan ahead more, you wouldn’t run into so many unforeseen problems. Planning is bringing the future into the present, so you can do something about it now. After you plan what you want to do, set the order you plan to do it in. I get stressed out the most when I try to do everything at once. Set daily goals for yourself and stick to them. 

Exercise 

Regular exercise can help prevent you from distressing, help you cope while you’re in distress, or repair the problems that arrive after you’ve been in distress. I suggest yoga, but just choose a form of exercise you like. Distress actually makes you gain fat, but that’s another blog for another day. 

Relax 

You can’t control everything. The future is unpredictable. You can distress over tomorrow, or realize there’s only so much you can do. Be the best you can, but when life happens, just relax and keep it moving. We only distress because our expectations for something didn’t turn out exactly like we thought it would. 

Choose the Right Company 

The people you surround yourself with have a huge impact on your life. They can either bring you down, or build you up. There’s no middle ground. Evaluate the people you spend the most time with and ask yourself if they are helping you move forward in life, or holding you back.

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