The Positive Side Of Stress

Swekriti Bhatnagar

9 years ago

“What you think about stress matters”

Source: usatoday.com

“There is so much work to be done!”, “I can’t take this anymore”, “I can’t do it now” are lines that are commonly repeat in stress. We have all experience some form of stress and the following negative thoughts at some point in our lives. There is not one person on this earth who can say he/she is stress free. But guess what I am! “What crap!”, you might be thinking. But yes it is true. I am stress free not because I don’t have stress but because of the way I look at it.

Anxiety, frustration, lack of concentration, bad mood, increased heart rate, sweat are all associated to stress. It is because of such negative connotation to stress that we forget what it really does. Stress in itself is not bad. It is how we see that makes a difference.

All our lives we have tried to run away from stress and believed it to be harmful but guess what there is a good side of stress. It is all about our perception. If we change our mind about stress we can actually change our bodily responses towards it.

Our body responses to a stressful situation in the form of increased heart rate and sweat. But what our body is actually doing is – it is preparing us to deal with the situation. The more the heart beats the more the blood and oxygen flow and the increase in them leads to an increase in your productivity. Hence it helps you to deal with the situation better.

In a study done on 30,000 adults in US over eight years suggests that people who see stress as harmful experience it as harmful. Whereas the people who experienced stress but did not perceived it to be harmful had no negative effect of that stress. If we perceive and respond in a positive way our bodies believe it and the stress becomes healthier.

The effect of stress is not inevitable. How we think and act can transform how we experience it.

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