Harnessing the Hidden Power of Stress

Stress is often labeled as the number one culprit for most of the problems we experience. It’s known for being the cause of anxiety, unhappiness, lethargy, and a myriad of mental and physical health problems.

However, when looking through the lens of Yin and Yang, stress is made up of two counterparts: distress and eustress. Distress is acknowledged for the negative impact it has on our lives, however eustress remains fairly unknown despite all the positive effects it has when it comes to enhancing life. Let’s take a quick peak at eustress and see how it’s actually what most of us are craving.

The Nature of Eustress

Eustress is more than distress with a positive spin. Eustress plays a vital role in the enhancing the quality of our lives. It leads to euphoria by ramping up our performance, eliciting creativity, and awaking personal growth. In order to reap the benefits of eustress, one needs to leverage the components that enable it.

The Thought Model

In cognitive psychology, all results originate from our mind. We have thoughts, label them, allow associated emotions to hijack us, take action from those emotions, and get corresponding results. It’s by viewing our circumstances a challenges rather than a threats that affects everything downstream.

For example, observing a circumstance as a threat will breed anxiety. Operating out of fear and anxiety typically leads to desperate action. Desperate action results in outcomes that are often labeled with the phrase ‘haste makes waste’.

In contrast, observing a circumstance as a winnable challenge breeds excitement. Operating out of a sense of fun and curiosity opens the door to creative action. Creative action is often acknowledged in retrospect as a stroke of genius.

Perception

Perception is where enjoyment begins. In most cases, simply reframing an obstacle opens the gates to happiness, creativity, and fulfillment. It could be anything from learning something new, decluttering and organizing, or addressing a disagreement through conversation that could be your obstacle. Notice how all the mentioned activities are neutral, it’s our interpretation that labels them as uncomfortable, difficult, or daunting.

Emotional Response

The emotional response is almost automatic to the label we attach to our circumstances. If the emotional response hasn’t gained a lot of momentum, we can easily shift our perception to a higher quality interpretation and have a higher quality emotional response. However, if the emotional response has too much momentum, shifting perceptions too soon will end up in shoving our emotions under a rug and result in toxic positivity. The only option left is to neutralize the emotion before going back to reframing the circumstance in a more positive light.

Action

This is where the flow state is most enjoyable. Taking action when supercharged with emotions of joy, euphoria, curiosity, or fun makes it possible to enjoy the process and hyper focus for hours. Although there’s many tactical tips & tricks to stay in the flow state when in action mode, the main blockers are procrastination in one of the following forms: Paralysis by analysis, (ie. having too many options) and confusion, (ie. not knowing where to start). Both are forms of not knowing what to do next and there’s plenty of ways to handle that.

Result

Results bring everything back to a full circle. When we take a look at the result, our perception of it changes the course we’re headed. By observing it as a shameful regrettable failure, we set set the productivity train tracks away from flow and into something disharmonious. Being careful of how we perceive the result is key to keep the flow momentum. Even if things don’t come out they way we’d like, reframing the situation as an opportunity to make an improvement or or try again through a different approach.

In summary, perception is the 20% of effort that controls 80% of the outcome. Most things in life are neutral and in edge cases don’t need to be magnified as bad as we make them out to be. By reframing what we need to tackle, it opens to doors to positive stress, the kind that rejuvenates us and makes us feel happy and alive.

Originally published at https://mentalchai.substack.com.