Good and Bad Stress
As someone who likes to be “easy going”, I am coming to terms with the idea of good and bad stress. These are a summary of some of the ideas that I find inspiring from Todd Hargrove’s book “Playing With Movement”.
Stress occurs whether we like it or not, but not all of it is bad for us. Actually stress is a stimulant helping us to grow. The idea that we can live without stress and just flow and be at ease, sounds great, but is actually utopic.
What’s bad stress? Stress that is prolonged, uncomfortable and beyond our control that in the end leave us weaker, depleting our energy even to the extent of being overwhelming.
And good stress? Challenges that are shorter in nature and within our control. Also experiences and tasks with adversity that is not overwhelming. They need a bit of will power and effort to resolve, but think doing a workout or taking a test, solving a puzzle or being socially vulnerable by speaking in front of a large audience. These all have an element of stress that through the process are actually beneficial. The stress is part of the challenge allowing us to grow.
There is obviously a difference between how people react to different stressors and the amount they can take. Bad stress for one person may be good stress for another and not necessarily seen in a competitive nature. Think how alcohol relaxes some people and makes others obnoxious…
There is too, a point where our systems get overloaded by stress. The metaphor of a bucket is great for describing stress and what/how much we can handle (resilience)… the bigger the bucket, the more we can take before it is full and we are overwhelmed. So small bits at a time are needed to be added to the bucket then released through sleep, play, relaxation, light exercise etc… daily, eventually through experience, growing the buckets size.
We are after all organisms that are continually evolving and changing and adapting. Our bodies and minds are muscles that we need to exercise. Since the physical body is pretty efficient, energy is directed into functions that are required. So when we don’t do something for a long time, the body sends energy to places where it is needed instead. Think going for a run… if we hadn’t been on one in a while, the muscles to execute such a feat would not be in the shape required. By then training for a few weeks with a gradual increase in effort, energy is directed to grow the muscles needed to develop this function. The body is truly fascinating in how efficiently it uses energy and how it works.
Another analogy to do with organisms and stress is how Gardners prune trees. They cut them back in winter so that they grow healthier and stronger in summer. Or non-fatal failure tends to lead to us growing and coming back even stronger (and / or wiser from the experience). So being subjected to limited / controlled amounts of stress is actually a good thing and something that we need.
Nassim Taleb coined the term “Anti-fragile” in his book to describe things which grow stronger from adversity, seeing it as the opposite of fragile - things which break from adversity. There is a certain flexibility to them that allows growth and change, rather than a fixed ideal or a permanent state of balance that eventually becomes brittle.
So I’m going out to make sure that I have some healthy stress in my life! Exercise, discussions of ideas with people of different view points, striking up conversations with strangers, challenging myself to learn new ideas… I’ll have to think of some more.
And definitely less of the bad stressors… lack of sleep, unhealthy diet (sugar!), social media…