The good stress of learning to walk 
Maybe you’ve heard about “good stress” and how without a certain amount of stress we don’t perform at our highest potential. We aren’t going to get into that kind of good stress right now, but we’d like for you to consider another kind of “good stress”. This is a part of stress that we don’t really see many people talking about. The “good stress” we’d like to talk about is the kind of stress that makes you consider making some changes in your life. The great thing, the wonderful (if difficult) thing, about stress is that it has a lot of good information for you about your life and the direction it’s going.
One of the most positive aspects of stress are the inner messages that our bodies try (again and again and again!) to make clear to us through all that tension and anxiety. Sometimes the message might simply be, “Slow Down!” Stress sometimes literally forces us to slow down by making us sick or making us unable to go along at our usual, frenzied pace. It’s when we’ve slowed down a little bit that we start to hear these inner messages.
Sometimes the message might be about how much more fulfilled you might be if you explored some other kind of work, an old hobby or a new passion. Sometimes they might be about how you could be treating your loved ones better. Sometimes the messages go even deeper. Whatever the message is, rest assured it will keep on coming through, one way or another. Rather than teaching our students how to just get rid of their stress, we also encourage them to consider other parts of their lives that may also want to transform. Without some kind of personal transformation, you may find that your stress and anxiety is like that arcade game of whack-a-mole. Smack it down in one place, and it pops right back up in another!
Is your stress like the gopher in whack-a-mole?
In the Harmonic Relaxation program, we encourage our students to go on a journey of personal transformation. It’s through this kind of transformation that you can really learn how to listen to the messages your body and your spirit are constantly trying to send you. The irony of stress is that it can get in the way of you hearing these messages, but if you learn how to relax a little bit and start to tune into yourself, you can begin to hear these messages from the deepest parts of yourself, the messages that stress has been trying to bring to your attention all along.
We always enjoy getting a new perspective on stress management from other teachers, and Deepak Chopra is one of everyone’s favorites. He’s got a great ability to simplify things down to their fundamentals while still conveying the beauty and wonder of our complex natures. You can listen to a short clip of him being interviewed by Dr. Mehmet Oz on Oprah Radio here.
In this interview Deepak echoes our belief that healthy stress management is a skill that anyone can learn. As he says, it’s not your environment – the people or situations surrounding you – that determines your stress levels. The important thing is the way you respond to your environment. If you learn how to manage your stress better, a situation that used to be overwhelming and unhealthy for you can become something that you sail through with ease. We are amazing beings with so much potential, and learning how to work with stress is a crucial key to unlocking that wonderful potential.
Be careful when using stress management as a band-aid. Don't ignore your inner knowing. 
Be careful here…
Now we would also add that just because you can make yourself feel more relaxed and at ease in a difficult environment doesn’t mean that you should stay in that environment! We all have to be careful not to try to use stress management as a permanent band-aid on the parts of our lives that aren’t aligned with our true purpose and greatest happiness. We can all learn how to feel better under stress, but we should also listen to the messages that stress is trying to deliver to us.
Just because we can use relaxation techniques to feel better in our current job or our rocky relationship, doesn’t mean that we should necessarily stay in that job or relationship! But if you can learn how to better deal with the stress you have now, then you can clear some mental and emotional space to just naturally make better decisions about your life. When we are relaxed, we can choose to make those life decisions from a place of ease and strength, rather than a place of fear and discomfort.
Money, relationships, and work. Those are the big ones for most of us. The big stressors. Some of us might add family to that list. For those of you experiencing a lot of job stress, we know that sometimes work and all the pressure and tension around it can feel overwhelming at times. Maybe you’ve denied just how bad it is for years, and you’re just now waking up to how much you need a change. Maybe the stress has crept up on you slowly, but all of a sudden it feels like you’re about to blow up from the pressure. Maybe you’ve just started a new job, and are feeling overwhelmed by an uncomfortable amount of pressure that you weren’t expecting. Nima and I have both been there – trust us, you aren’t alone!
For example, let’s say you’re working in a high stakes, high pressure environment where everyday you’re challenged to perform at the highest level. Maybe you’re a cop or a stock trader or a high school teacher, or a nanny for 4 little monsters – we mean that in the sweetest way of course . You’ve been in the same position for years now. You don’t really know for sure the best way to deal with all of this work stress. Somehow you’ve muddled through, but it is starting to take its toll on you. You know that little by little your mental, emotional and physical well being is going downhill. You haven’t had a heart attack or anything yet thank God, but it’s something you worry about sometimes at night. You are beginning to sense that you’re starting to break down, like a car whose maintenance has been neglected for way too long. You’re running out of steam, and you’re starting to feel like this job that you used to love may be the end of you.
To keep things simple, let’s talk about 3 possible directions you could go from here:
Choice #1, you can keep on living the same way you have been up to now. Change isn’t easy and for now you’re just going to hope you’ll make it through somehow, and figure it all out sometime later. This choice might not look so attractive, and you might even get a sense of dread in the pit of your stomach when you consider this option. Remember that saying about the definition of insanity? The one about doing the same thing and expecting different results?
Choice #2, you can make a break for it. Just get out quick while you still can. The pressure inside you has built up over so long that this option sometimes feels like the best choice. Your professional reputation might suffer if you choose this option, or it might not. The main thing is that you need to get out now, so you’re just going to jump and figure out the landing later on!
Choice #3, learn how to deal with your stress right now, so you can let go of some of that tension you’ve been building up all these years. Feel better right now, start to get healthy again, and be in a more relaxed and clear headed place so you can make good decisions about what it is you really want to do in the future. From this place, you can make a graceful exit from your high stress job, or you can stay and start to shape your environment to better suit you. If you do decide to go, you have the the space to chart out where you want to land, what your future might look like. What your new job or business or passion might look like, and how best to get there from here.
The only danger in that 3rd choice that we see is that sometimes we try to use stress management as a kind of band-aid. Sometimes, and this is true for those high performing, type A types among us especially, we think that poorly managed stress is the only thing we need to look at in out lives. That if we can just learn how to let go of some our tension and calm down a bit with some stress management techniques, then we can keep driving ourselves at 200 miles per hour.
If we try to put that kind of a band-aid on ourselves, we usually find that, just like a real band-aid, it will only stick for so long. Eventually, you will still need to slow down – no matter how well you master the art of relaxation. Just like a car engine, our bodies are just not meant to rev at 100% all the time. For one thing, we all need periods of rest, time to relax, time to take it easy, time to heal from the daily stress of living. And when it comes time to get going again and to get some work done, our body-engines do much better if we can work and cruise along at 2 or 3000 RPM rather than revving constantly near the red line. It’s at this level of moderate stress that we can find our sweet spot and perform our best, without breaking down over the long run.
