Stress can be a b-
… well, let’s just leave it at that. In a society where all aspects of life are
increasingly interconnected, the integration of stress into our daily lives has
also become more prevalent. Too much spillover work from the office, either do
overtime or bring work back home? Stress! In-laws dropping by for the weekends,
and the house is a mess? Stress! Stress! A stack of articles to be converted
into content for the blog? Stress! Stress! Stress!
The textbook
approach to stress is by completely ridding yourself off of it. This suggests
that you actively attempt to uproot the causes of stress, and remove these negative
thoughts and feelings from your life. However, this type of ‘out of sight, out
of mind’ mentality can only work in certain scenarios – and dealing with stress
isn’t one in which it is particularly effective. Instead, there are other ways
in handling stress.
No, standing by and
allowing stress to cave-in isn’t quite the most effective way! In the grander
scheme of things, stress can actually be used as important tool to not only get
by our daily lives, but also to be leveraged as an advantage in dealing with
everyday tasks. The key is in identifying the suitable strategies to use stress
for good, instead of it being a detrimental, irremovable aspect of life.
As with the image
above, how we view stress is dependent on the framework which we use. It could
be read as ‘Good’ or ‘Evil’, varying between focus on the black outline or on
the white spaces. Similarly, stress can be seen as a pump-up, motivating factor
instead of being a malignant mechanism dragging you downwards. The strategy is
not in denying or ignoring stress, but engaging with it through a positive
lens.
Another way in
dealing with stress is by taking a step back, and not let stress be the
definition of you. Instead of allowing stress to be stapled on as a part of
your everyday routine, acknowledge it as merely being a response to whatever
issues at hand you may be facing. Learn how to unhook from stress. Don’t let it
become an emotion that strangles your capacity to deliver results. Redefine it
as a feeling you experience, and that will allow you to move forward, without
having to constantly think of ways to remove stress.
Stress is a natural
response to the myriad of things we face in the world. By focusing on how to
combat and remove stress, we introduce more aspects of life to stress over!
Instead of completely disconnecting from stress, we should learn how to use
stress to our advantage. Stop stressing about stress, okay?
Image Source:
(1) sexyfoodtherapy.com
(2) twitter.com
(3) janetsmithwarfield.com
(4) kauppalehti.fi
Benjamin Lee Cheng Han | Benjamin is a student of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, currently exploring unchartered realms in the Public Relations field. Writing is clearly his interest – a decisive contributor to his foray into the public relations industry. To date, he boasts the proud record of having tamed one of the office cats, and drinking expired tea from the pantry.
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