The Problem of Stress
The highest indicator for poor health and lower quality of life today is STRESS. Unfortunately, everyone is stressed, even little children and all the way up to the elderly.
Life today is fast-paced, highly competitive, and the days are long. No more predictable days where you show up for work, get home at a decent time, eat dinner with the family, and go to bed early. Life is far too demanding for that long ago paradigm.
For all of us, dealing with the realities of 21st century work means that stress and tension is to be expected. A certain level of stress is part of coping with the demands of society- whether you are a student, a physician, an executive, a police officer, a barista, a teacher, a salesperson, a business man or woman, a professor, or any other functionary role you can think of. It is an unfortunate reality today that stress is everywhere.
The question is HOW MUCH stress and tension is acceptable in your mind and body before it begins to erode your wellbeing? And, how do you know when you have reached that point? More importantly, do you know what to do when you are experiencing too much stress? The answer is likely, “No”.
For most people, stress shows up as a health problem, or a relationship breakdown. For example: digestive symptoms, headaches, depression, or an inability to sleep. Stress can be experienced as, “vegging-out in front of the television”, overeating, drinking too much, having no energy, or simply that feeling of, “I just can’t turn off the thoughts in my head”.
Does any of this sound like you?
And could it be that you have other issues that are negatively impacting your life which you unconsciously attribute to your stress? Stress left unaddressed grows and expands. It has a cancerous-like quality in that the more it is left to run its own program (think computers) the more it infects the other systems in your mind and body.
Stress shows up in children as well as adults. Todays research has revealed that children as young as 5, 6, and 7-yrs old are experiencing high levels of stress. Sad, isn’t it? Stress is maturing their young brains at a faster rate than in the previous 20th century, due to the corrosive sense of insecurity and fear that has become pervasive in young peoples lives.
For anyone -of any age- stress is a response to either an external or internal stimuli. Stress is an adaptive response to something that is perceived as a threat. Depending on the type of stress, the threat can be situational, conditional, long-term, temporary, or of a severe nature. But have no doubt, stress takes a toll on the mind, the body, on your ability to focus, and unfortunately on relationships too. Stress can ruin a relationship.
Unless you understand stress and how it is activated in the brain and the body, it can feel as if YOU ARE THE STRESS. And most people end up personalizing their experience of stress at some point, which is part of its staying power. When a person loses the ability to observe what is occurring in the body, and in the emotions, the experience of stress begins to dictate how life is lived.
Stress will rob you of a quality life. Stress will rob you of vital energy that you need to create the life you love. Stress will age you prematurely. And stress will erode your pleasure and happiness leading to, at some point, Dis-ease in your body.
When stress has reached a chronic condition, many systems in the body have been altered. While the most common approach to stress has been the use of prescription medications, there are also many other methods to help you lower the stress in your life. Even better, we can go for getting rid of most of it altogether. By providing you with the knowledge and education you need to improve your life, you will be able to rid your self of the harmful effects of stress.
Chronic stress involves habituated patterns that have bonded in the brain and the body. But as we work together, you will be able to have the tools you need to pay attention to your “inside game” as well as your “outside game”. Once you have more awareness, and the tools, then you can begin to make the important changes that will lower your stress. When your conscious observer is part of your day-to-day living, then you can make the shifts that will keep you out of those stress ditches that spiral you downward. It’s simple, but not easy. And you need support. We all need support when it comes to making changes.
That is why it is so important to LEARN how to deal with stress differently.
How can I help you learn about stress and what you need to do? Knowledge is power. Health is wealth and isn’t it time you had the tools to change the stress in your life?
The Way We Work Is Killing Us
An interview with the author of Dying for a Paycheck
By Brigid Schulte
April 24, 2018 5:50AM
In the United States, workers work among the longest, most extreme, and most irregular hours; have no guarantee to paid sick days, paid vacation, or paid family leave; and pay more for health insurance, yet are sicker and more stressed out than workers in other advanced economies. U.S. companies fret about rising health care costs—health spending per capita in the U.S. increased nearly 29 fold in the past 40 years, outpacing the growth of the economy—and institute wellness programs like lunchtime yoga, meditation, anti-smoking, or obesity prevention.
But Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says companies are completely missing the point. Offering lunchtime yoga to stressed-out workers ignores the real reason why workers are so stressed out in the first place—management practices like long work hours, unpredictable schedules, toxic bosses, and after-hours emails. It’s not individual workers making bad choices about their health that’s making them so sick. It’s the way corporate America expects workers to work. And in his new book, Dying for a Paycheck, he argues that the costs have become so great that it’s time for companies and the government to take responsibility and create real change.
For most adults, work is a primary source of stress. To learn more, go to: Corporate Stress