Managing Stress

Whether it’s family, work, or life in general stressing you out it’s important to find healthy ways to manage it. As a society we’ve normalized stress and we even seem to consider it a necessary part of our lives. At Conquering Life, we believe that stress can be processed into healthier things like proactivity and initiative. However, for those of you who haven’t gone through our program, the first step is learning how to manage your stress. I’ve spoken about stress in previous blogs, about learning to balance life and taking time for yourself. This week’s blog is more about how our stress can have external ramifications.

Our culture often uses stress as an excuse, I know I’ve done so many times before. We justify and sometimes enable unhelpful or negative behaviour with stress. While stress can be a powerful force to deal with, it isn’t a justification for mistreating those around us. How many times have you heard someone justify another person’s rudeness with that excuse? Perhaps you’ve even done it yourself. It’s seems like we view stress as this foreign substance that takes control of your brain and dictates your actions against your will. Stress and how we deal with it is a choice. Stress becomes a real problem when we don’t believe we have any control. Instead of it being a motivator it can do the opposite, stopping us in our tracks. But that negative energy is being fed by our own minds – we should never forget or underestimate the incredible power our imaginations are capable of.

Stress is defined as, “a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances”. Which means that stress is a reaction – it’s how we deal with external circumstances. Knowing that we have control over our stress doesn’t always mean we can automatically clear it away. It takes work as well as awareness to learn how to manage and eventually reprogram our stress response. The main thing is accepting this awareness and taking action. Letting our stress out on other people might seem like a natural or excusable thing to do but it really only sends out more negativity and continues propagating the notion that it’s acceptable to unleash your stress on others.

At Conquering Life we understand that stress is very stressful and that sometimes it can feel overwhelming, but we also know that you have it within your power to resolve it. This week especially, I’ve had to check in with my stress and remember this very thing. I had to figure out if the situation warranted stress, I had to see what I could do to alter the circumstances and I found how proactive and positive actions can turn that stress into productivity. We all live on this earth together – so let’s not let our stress continue the vicious stress cycle. Find a place and yell, yell it all out and then figure it out. Stress is a reaction not an affliction, one that I know you and I can all Conquer!

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