Stress, how to void it and hot to manage it.

Everyone is subject of soem degrees of stress throughout their daily lives, whether it’s from your growing bisiness, family or your brand new job..

You have to manage stress because nearly every time it generates more problems. It is known taht It can impact your sleep, which in turn can impact in a negative way your loved performance.

Everybody says that “stress is bad” and this definition and conclusion is vague and incorrect.

Is it true? Yes and no. Why? Because our relation with stress is far more complex than we think. It’s not just about how we overcome it, but how we understand it, manage it, and harness it to lead more productive lives.

What Causes Stress?

First of all. Why do we have anxiety?
Walter Cannon, tah psychologist who coined the “fight or flight response” concept said that the first function of anxiety is self-preservation.

In different cases, it is a neded response to threats or hostile situation that bring us mentally and physically ready to face and deal with them. The positie affects of anxiety is that it shapes your brain’s chemistry in a way that can cause better attention, enhanced cognitive functions, and improve your senses.

But not every circumstance need a high level of anxiety because it can be harmful if it sticks to our body for long (or longer) periods of time where it has no purposes. In this cases it can only distract us and therefore have negative consequences on our work and life.

Stress is ultimately how we react to stressors: actual or perceived challenges to our ability to meet our actual or perceived needs.

In psychology stressfull situations are called stressors. They can be external or internal:

• External Stressors are changes that happens inside your environment. It can be your work conditions, or unfamiliar and unplesant tasks you have to accomplish.
• Internal Stressors are composed by thoughts or your conduct, like how you behave through your day, how you eat or how good or bad you sleep. Even little moments of anger can be huge stressors.

However, not all stress is the same. It can be broken down into two main types: acute and chronic.

High level of stress (Acute) can boost your productivity

We’re all friendly with this kind of stress. This is the kind of anxiety that can help you solve difficoult problems and give you more endurance. This can be extremely useful if you have to face threats, both phiscal. like races or dangerous situations, and mental, like job deadlines or exams.

If you’re are a master-procrastinator, good chances are you’re used to needi high levels of acute stress/anxiety to “get you in the zone”. And that usually means a deadline staring you in the face. When you look at this situation stress is a friend that can help you put in the work.

These situation of more or less frequant and intense acute stress can take place in chaotic and hasty lifestyles. These lifestyles can “overcharge” your brain, which is counterproductive​, unfavorable, adn can result in bournouts.

Chronic Stress Negatively Impacts the Quality of Your Life

This is the stress you want to sty away from; it drains your energies over time. It’s frequently due to a stressfull environment, such as a job you barely like, an unhealthy relationship, or various financial strains.

Chronic anxiety can damage the quality of your sleep and meke you older by speeding up the aging process. We can not always soccour the sources of chronic stress in our day to day life. But it, as mentioned before, is the way we react to stressors and that we can control at least to some extent.

Good vs. Bad Stress

Some people thrive under it and need the pressure to be just right before they dive into a task. Others meticulously plan ahead in order to avoid unnecessary pressure at all costs. Neither approach is right or wrong. It’s just important to be self-aware of how you personally react to anxiety and the nature of the tasks in front of you.

The right amount of stress can help you be more productive in some cases, and without any of it at all, some tasks would be hard to focus on. But it goes without saying that too much stress can result in over-arousal that can lead to frustration, anxiety, depression, impaired performance, and other negative consequences.

According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, work that requires endurance (routine and mundane tasks or ones that require a steep commitment of time to complete) can actually benefit from higher levels of acute stress. However, you can usually focus better on new or unfamiliar tasks without too much pressure.