You Can’t Avoid Stress — Then What?
The word stress immediately tweaks our brain to negativity. We get stressed, as soon as we hear of stress. What we want - we all want to be stress-free.
Life seems to be full of stress. Stress in personal life, stress in professional life, stress in relationships, health-related stress, financial stress, and whatnot.
The question arises, can we have a life without stress? The answer is a big NO.
You may be thinking, if I am telling you that there can’t be a stress-free life, then what is the purpose of this article?
Yes, you can’t have a stress-free life. Then what?
You need to understand about stress more deeply.
What are the stress types?
There are two types of stress -
- Distress
- Eustress
Many of us may not be knowing about Eustress, I was one of them. Understanding about Eustress changed my perception of stress.
Earlier, I always thought, how to become stress-free or to control the stress. I didn’t understand that it's not possible to be stress-free in life and trying to control the stress, made things more complex.
Any type of stress is dependent upon our mindset. Each of us has a different mindset, which is basically our belief system. Our belief system is the accumulation of our learnings over a period of time from different sources. We respond to a situation based on our belief system, that is in our subconscious mind.
Putting The Power of Subconscious Mind in Use
What is Distress?
When we talk of stress, normally we mean distress.
The word distress has many meanings. Distress is an unpleasant emotion, feeling, thought, condition, or behavior.
Distress is related to extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain. In other words, stress at an extreme level is Distress.
We all know, “Excess of anything is bad.” The same applies to stress. When the stress is in excess or extreme level then it’s distress and that’s the negative stress.
Distress gives rise to feelings like —Depression, anxiety, panicky, out of control, helplessness, anger, sadness, fearful, irritation, unsure. In other words, being overconcerned about the situation.
What is Eustress?
We already discussed that there can’t be stress-free life. But there’s another kind of stress known as Eustress, which is actually a healthy kind of stress that gives you a feeling of fulfillment when you are out of the stressful situation.
Eustress works as an energy booster for performing challenging activities.
We can also say when we are under stress while doing something that we love or like to do, that stress is Eustress.
Taking a simple example — Imagine you are going on vacation with your family to your dream destinations, say Europe tour.
There is a lot of planning that has to go into it to undertake such a vacation. Starting from fixing up the dates, arranging for the money, chalking out itinerary, purchasing flight tickets, getting the required visa, hotel booking, packing of baggage, and so on.
If you look at the above, so many things are to be done, and hence there is so much of stress attached to it.
If you love traveling then the stress here is Eustress. You will not mind this stress because the enjoyment attached to the outcome is bigger than the stress itself.
Can we convert Distress to Eustress?
From the above discussion, it’s clear that we can’t avoid stress. Stress is part of our life which needs to be accepted. This realization changed my life. It made me think hard, how to handle stress so that it does not have a negative impact on me.
This is when I came across the term Eustress. The understanding of Eustress sparked the thought that there is also a positive side of stress. Stress is not all negative as per our normal perception.
The next question that came to mind, can all stress be Eustress?
The good news is YES! All stress can be Eustress.
HOW?
If you look into our example of the vacation planning and ask, what made the stress as Eustress?
The simple answer is, “My love towards traveling.”
What does this mean? When we do something that we love to do, the stress attached to such activity becomes Eustress instead of Distress.
“It’s not the stress that kills us, it's our reaction to it.” Hans Selye
If we are able to attach a purpose to our actions, we can convert all our Distress to Eustress.
When we do anything that we are forced to do or we don’t like to do, we attract distress. This is where a shift of mindset is required.
Most of us live a life without purpose. We live a mechanical life, a life that our social systems have taught us. We become the slave of our fixed mindset shaped by our upbringing and social factors.
Unfortunately, we are not taught about life purpose and mold ourselves to live our passion.
You need to find and define your LIFE PURPOSE. Life purpose is the bigger picture of what you want from your life. Once you are clear of the Life Purpose then all your actions can be driven by a purpose keeping in consideration the bigger purpose i.e. the Life Purpose.
Understanding the above concept can help you live a purpose-driven life and all your Distress can become Eustress.
This is quite a simple formula and can be easily applied if you realize the concept and willing to act on it.
You have to start taking small steps and over a period of time, as you evolve, it will become part of you Second Nature.
I’m developing a course based on the above concept and your frank feedback by way of response will go a long way to structure it in the most effective manner. I have something very special to offer to those who respond with their email.
