IS SOME STRESS GOOD FOR YOU?
Stress can seem to be an ever-present component in daily life. Your work life, your kids’ schedules, your spouse, and your in laws can all add tension to your life – even if they don’t mean to. If you have dreams and ambitions, your self-imposed expectations on yourself can be the greatest source of pressure in your life. How you perceive and process stress may be the biggest variable, which shapes your success.
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First, understand stress is not all bad. It is a primal response designed to prepare us for challenges and threats. Stress can infuse you with heightened alertness and enhance your ability to complete tasks. In this sense, stress can serve as an energy source that propels you.
However, much like fire that can give you heat, but also burn your house down, too much stress becomes a problem when it exceeds manageable levels. Excessive stress can transform from a motivating force into a paralyzing one. This is the classic “fight or flight” response. Whether you choose to stand your ground or run, it is in response to a trigger and may not serve your goals. This unchecked stress can ravage your well-being and impede your capacity to achieve.
Stress can manifest in different forms. There is challenge stress and threat stress. Challenge stress is a stimulus you experience when you're faced with a task that stretches your abilities but remains within the realm of your skill set. Think of it as stepping out of your comfort zone. This type of stress gives you the opportunity to rise to the occasion.
On the other hand, threat stress can be detrimental to your efforts. It's the stress you feel when you doubt you can handle a task or situation. Threat stress has a detrimental impact on performance because it triggers physiological responses that hinder your cognition and diminish your performance.
Stress also affects decision-making. In the mental arena stress clouds your judgment and impairs your ability to make clear decisions. High levels of stress narrow your focus and limits your perspective options. In effect, you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Furthermore, stress has a profound impact on your bandwidth. That is, the mental resources you allocate to different tasks. Just like your computer's processing power can become overwhelmed by too many applications being open, your brain is strained by too much stress. This can result in poor memory, impaired attention, and a reduced ability to process information. Obviously, you can’t perform at your best in this kind of head space.
It's essential to acknowledge that what is stressful is based on individual perceptions. What may be a stressor for one person may be a motivating for another. The impact of stress on performance is deeply intertwined with your mindset and coping strategies. Cultivating a resilient mindset and looking at stress in a different way can be the key to achieving your goals.