How to Prevent Stress in 5 Minutes

What is stress? Stress is a natural biological and psychological response that is intended to assist us in meeting difficult and challenging situations in our environment. It only becomes a problem when we experience it far too often and it starts to have a significant negative impact in our life. It can impact our sleep, our digestion, our relationships and our overall sense of well-being.

Where does stress come from? A common perspective is that situations are stressful and when we are experiencing those situations we will feel stress. You have likely heard many times a situation being described as “stressful”. This idea does not seem to make a lot of sense, as most of us can remember noticing that different people react to situations differently. We may also have noticed that some people do not seem to feel stress at all in those situations. A situation cannot therefore be stressful. This is also an empowering perspective, as it give us the option of reacting differently to a situation.

So how is stress created? At this point it is useful to differentiate between physical stress and psychological stress. Often one kind of stress can lead to another kind. This article is about the much more common issue of psychological stress. Psychological stress is created when our mind forms a story about a situation and in that story are two key opinions. One opinion is that we need the situation to have a particular outcome in order for us to be okay. The other opinion is that we are not going to be able to achieve that outcome.

Let’s look at an example that we can all likely relate to. Please also keep in mind this is just one scenario to try and illustrate the point, if it does not work for you just insert a different scenario that makes more sense for you. The scenario is that we have made an appointment, let’s say a job interview. This job interview is very important to us because it is very important that we get this job. We can say that we need this job in order to be okay. Now let’s say that we are stuck in traffic on the way to the job interview, and it is looking increasingly likely that we will not make it to the interview. The more late we become for the meeting, the higher the level of stress that we feel.

We can see that these two ingredients are needed to create stress, because if either of these ingredients are missing we will not feel stress. If the story is that we need to have a situation happen in a specific way for us to be okay, but there is no part of the story that states the situation will not turn out the way we need it to, there is no problem and no stress. Also, if the story is that a situation that will not turn out the way we want it to turn out, but the story does not include the ingredient that we need it to turn out for us to be okay, then there is no problem, and no stress.

Now that we understand that stress has these two necessary ingredients, we can have an impact on the level of stress we experience in our lives. The tools we use to make this change are understanding and mindfulness. Whenever we feel stress coming on, it is helpful if we can pay attention to the thoughts that are arising along with the situation. In that story, if we can identify the two ingredients, or at least one of them, we can notice that these ingredients are thoughts and not necessarily facts.

Once we shift our relationship to these thoughts from treating them as facts and believing them, to treating them as thoughts that arise in the mind, the level of stress we are feeling will often reduce. This process of bringing mindfulness to the event, noticing the thoughts, noticing that they are just thoughts, and not immediately believing them as facts, can happen in just a few moments. Those few moments can shift our experience from feelings of stress, to just an event that we are experiencing in the moment, and it will likely have a much different effect on our bodies and our emotional well-being.

If you are interested in exploring more about how mindfulness can help reduce the level of stress that you have in your life, please visit www.justthis.ca.