In today’s society, people are trying to cope with stress in their lives more than ever before. Modern technology was supposed to give us more freedom, but instead it gave us less freedom, and added more stress in our lives. And some people have lost their jobs due to Artificial Intelligence. Long term employment for most have become a thing of the past.
Working people are constantly pressured to be connected online, and the younger generations are losing hours of sleep due to becoming addicted to their smart phones, tablets, this concern is being raised by psychologists all over the world, the messages, texts, and news flash are coming at us constantly with lightning speed, I myself, when I use my cell phone, I get bombarded constantly by messages from different media platforms.
Our costs of living has gone up and even though our wages have increased, our buying power has gone down. Both partners need to work in order to make ends meet.
The current adult generation with teenagers may also have aging parents, and they need to take care both of their kids, and increasingly take care of their parents. While taking care of themselves, and their primary relationship, and how to balance their life and their career. This cause many to experience a feeling of being stretched thin, and fatigue is started to creep in and get a strong hold, if it hasn’t already. Breakups of relationships and families are on the rise, as there is less time available to spend on the family unit.
People are talking about how stressed out they are. The use of words stress, burnout and fatigue are in common use, in today’s society, as well as mindfulness, resilience and the need to have a balance life.
Yet, no matter what we do; no matter what methods or form of stress management we implement, to help us overcome stress; our stresses return, and burnouts happen more frequently without understanding why they are happening. We are losing the chance of living balanced life. The relief of stress is short lived and we soon enough, have to start all over again. This creates a fatigue that can eat us alive from within, as it is never ending.
How long can we keep this up? Is there another way?
Yes, there is another way of living and that is to befriend our stress, and to stop living in fear of experiencing stress, or fear of going through burnout.
WOW, what is he talking about? Liking my stress? Is he crazy?
Please, let me explain …
When you feel stress, where in your body do you feel it, and what sort of sensations do you feel in your body, does it feel physical, mental or emotional?
With me it is a physical experience, not emotional, nor is it a mental one. Only when I react to it, then the emotions and the mental thoughts come into play. And most of the time our reactions to stress are negative, therefor it becomes a negative experience.
Stress is an energy that is rushing through your body, the moment you feel it, you know it is there, it is similar to experiencing love, pain, anger, faith and hope.
Stress is pure energy, it is neither positive nor negative.
Hang on, hang on, wait a minute, there he goes again!
What do you mean stress is not negative, where do you get that cock and bull story?
Well it all started with you being a young child, when stress came into your life, you reacted to it, in an innocent way, however to others, mostly adults, it was way over the top, bouncing of the walls, or screaming your head off, or totally excited, and that was too much to handle on top of the adults’ existing stress levels, and they reacted to that with something like:
STOP! ENOUGH ALREADY!
Take a hold of yourself young man/lady!
You are driving me CRAZY! Get out!
And so, you learned to do it their way, and each time you feel stress coming over you, you have subconsciously a reaction based on those learned behaviours. And they set the tone how you react to the stress in the moment. And every stress management tool that you have acquired over the years, brought you nothing but temporary relief, IF that …
Well, there is another way, and that is to understand what stress is, and what you can do with it.
Stress is energy, and we cannot manage energy as it depletes over time, there is constant need to produce more energy and a constant need to replace what is used or lost. Because we cannot manage energy efficiently, we cannot manage stress efficiently, instead we need to do something completely different in order to use it effectively.
Stress is a constant physical energy that is with us, from the very moment we were conceived, to the moment we leave this life. Stress is our constant companion, most of the time we don’t even realize that we are have stress, and the body is in constant need of nourishment, the mind is in constant need of information, the spirit is in constant need to feel fulfillment and happiness.
There is no such thing, as a “stress free moment”!
Wow, really? Yes, when we do not experience stress anymore, we are not alive.
Knowing that stress is a constant companion, it would be prudent to make it our best friend, we have to learn to “befriend our stress”, learn to live with it, learn from it, and start to use it wisely, after all it is just energy, neutral in its purest form, it can help us change direction to a better state of mind, a more fulfilling life, a life worth living to the fullest extent.
Resilience is not about trying to avoid our stress, instead it is about embracing our stress and use the momentum to our best advantage, to change our direction to a hopeful future.
