There are many things to say about stress, and poor stress shouldn’t really put any of them on display. And yet, for about 3 decades now, there have been studies and research findings published which show that the whole distress-eustress thing is not really as they say it is, and that it is not stress per se that is harmful, but the combination of stress and the way we think about it.
(This is not the subject of this article, but here is a US research result from 1998 when 30,000 people were asked about the stress they experienced in the previous year and their attitude to it. They found that stress increased the risk of death only in those who thought of it as harmful to their health – and by a whopping 43%! – but that those who regarded it as a natural part of life or who emphasised its positive effects did not have a higher risk of death, what’s more, the latter group even had better indicators than those who reported no significant stress in their lives during the period under study. So mindset, the importance of which is so often emphasised, is also crucial here. I’ve read a funny way of putting it in one of the papers: no one is going to get down on their knees and say please, give me more stress, but reframing is worth thinking about. Of course, it is much harder to reframe an illness like cancer than it would be to reframe it if your Lamborghini was scratched, no one denies that.)
But what is really worth paying attention to, because it has a very negative impact on our lives, is what opportunities and challenges we say no to from time to time because we are afraid of them and would rather not take them on. And by doing so, we also say no to becoming stronger, happier and (further) strengthening our human relationships through gaining more wholeness.
Let’s just play through some of the choices we have made in our past when we chose to say no to something for the reasons above – a job, a change, an invitation. Did our lives get richer or poorer because of it? What is the price we might still be paying? A lot of energy (and stress) goes into a situation even when we are trying to avoid it, even though it comes up for perhaps the twentieth time.
Of course, self-realisation can be very difficult and painful, which is why it is important to be understanding and loving towards ourselves in such situations, but understanding and love should not mean that we should also protect ourselves from any great challenge. At such times, it is worth sitting down and imagining how the world would feel if we did take the plunge and were already enjoying its fruits. And if we find that it would make us better, more beautiful, happier, we should rush in and say yes, after that it’s really embarrassing to turn back:).
