A Positive Attitude Towards Stress Can Change How It Affects You.

We are all too aware these days of the negative affects of prolonged periods of stress on our bodies, but short lived bursts can help us to perform at our peak and help us rise to the challenge of difficult tasks. If you are in fear of feeling that increase of heart rate and that slightly flushed feeling as the blood pumps a bit faster through your body, increasing the oxygen supply, then stress may well result in poor performance, but if you view these changes as a welcome benefit, then you will reap the rewards that this heightened state of awareness can give you, as well as decreasing the negative impact.

At a recent TED seminar, Kelly McGonigal explains how to make stress your friend. If you can regard stress as a useful tool in your emotional and physical states rather than fear its existence you will find that its negative impact can be reduced. As with many negative states, it is all too often the fear of those feelings such as pain or adrenaline that keeps us feeling them. An adrenaline ‘junkie’ welcomes that intense rush and looks to feel it again and again but in wanting to have that intensity they find that it ebbs away all too quickly. It you don’t let go of the fear your body will think you are in constant danger and so prolong the feared state, relax into it and you will return to safety. In psychology you often get more of anything you attempt to avoid, so welcome in the stress as your friend and you will get less of it 🙂

Bunny