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So, Where are your stress levels today?

Grandparents posing with grandchildrenAs we continue our series on stress, lets review what we know about stress and how we can make it work for us.

Stress is the energy that our bodies use to do things.

We can spend that energy to create and realize our goals, make productive plans for the future, solve problems, play with our kids and enjoy productive and happy lives. Or we can squander it, use it up indiscriminately with little return.

We can compare it to an inheritance we receive. We put it in the bank and determine how we will spend it. We can spend it rapidly on whatever pleases us in the moment, we can maximize its potential by using it in ways where we get the best return, or we can diminish its spending quality and burn it up needlessly through dis-stress.

When we invest our money, we want to get a return of some kind. When we invest the minutes of our day, we want to have some kind of satisfaction and important gains to our lives in return. Those moments with your kids, your spouse, your family pay big dividends. Like any investment, we don’t realize the returns until sometime in the future.

It’s not stress we want to get rid of – its distress.

Time management can relieve a lot of time pressure that creates distress. We reduce the intensity of expectations by eliminating wasteful use of our time, planning and organizing, and self-regulation.

Purposefully scheduling in rest and relaxation gives us a wide choice of ways to unwind and de-stress. This allows us to work hard and know it will be balanced by play. Finding humor at all times, relieves the pressure of living.

Distress is what we create between our ears.

Anything that puts a demand on us and creates stress is called a stressor. Yet what stresses one person out will energize another. All of us respond to life in our own way. Our personality traits and genetic pre-disposition can certainly make us more vulnerable to how we respond to circumstances.

In my upcoming blogs I will share information about how we create distress and ways to minimize and even eliminate a lot of it.

Marlene Anderson

 

 

 

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