Stress is a common word which we use in our daily life. People of every age group experiences stress nowadays. People tend to equate stress with pressure. This pressure can be business or academic targets, exams or expectation in relationships. Sometimes people think that it is natural to get stressed in a situation which is not according to their wishes. Unknowingly of the result of stress on their mental and physical health, people call it natural. Some group of people also assert that certain amount of stress is good to perform better. Before we get into these debate, it is important to ask ouRs.elves what stress is and how do we feel when we experience it.
Stress = Pressure ÷ Resilience. (Resilience means inner strength)
Today we have completely ignored the denominator ( Resilience) and refer stress as pressure. Stress is a pain which comes to tell us that there is something I need to change. Whenever there is a dependency on someone or something, the immediate second thought comes of fear( what if I don’t get it or I loose it). This dependency is stress. Stress is our creation of wrong thoughts which has an effect on our efficiencies, memory power, decision power and hence on our performance.
Suppose a person has a pain in his knee and is walking and walks at the same speed as he was walking without the pain. If he doesn’t take care of the pain and manages his daily life with it, the pain gets aggravated. One day suddenly he needs to run because of some reason, will he be able to run? In this case, the knee pain is equal to stress which people create in their daily life. Taking another example:- exam is a pressure but if we create anxiety will be able to perform well?
Is stress required to perform
Suppose a project is given to two people A and B. They are given a target to complete the project on a certain date. A starts working on the project without creating any fear( what if I can’t complete or I loose my job) or anger ( why such target is given and so on.) The person B too starts working on the project but with fear, anxiety and anger. The end result could be same:- both person has achieved the said target. But internally the person B is very fatigue/ exhausted and is not happy despite completing the project.
Stress is an impact of our physical and emotional well being. Hence, any amount of stress is damaging.
Can stress be our choice?
It is our belief system that unless there is stress we will not perform well. Parents’ inability to heal their mental scars because of their notion of natural stress has resulted young children getting into depression. Today, we have child psychiatrist to help children releasing their stress which could have done by parents. Therefore unless we heal ourselves, we will not be able to take care of anyone.
Situations ( targets,exams,and so on.) are not in our control but we have control on our response in every situation. Therefore stress too is our choice. Our first responsibility in any situation should be to take charge of our state of mind because that is the only thing which is in my control. For instance, if someone else’s car bumped my car, I have choices to respond. One is that I get out of the car, shout at the person, create hatred or even use inappropriate words and then leave the scene. The end result of this behaviour is that my car has not got repaired by the argument but I created a lot of stress and anger which would affect adversely my work, my behaviour at workplace and at home. The second response is to say hello and have a nice day without creating stress or anger. By doing it I save a lot of energy and thus my conduct in the different scenes of the day is not negatively affected.
Therefore, the choice is completely ours whether to get carried away with the situations or to make a choice.