Blessed to (sometimes) be Stressed
Avoiding stress isn’t a blessing, it’s a trap.
Too blessed to be stressed.
In the middle of 2020, no doubt fuelled by COVID-induced boredom levels, the ‘Cake Meme’ emerged. Hyper-realistic images of everyday objects that, when cut into, revealed themselves to actually be cake.
The meme was great. It was entertaining, and the ingenuity, creativity and execution was quite astounding.
But the meme brought to mind a familiar concept for me: things are not always what they seem. What appears idyllic on the surface can contain something inside that isn’t always good for you over the long run.
In the case of the cake meme that something inside is plenty of sugar.
With seemingly aspirational phrases like ‘Too Blessed to be Stressed’, it’s something potentially more dangerous.
The world is a lot right now.
We’re living in uncertain and tumultuous times; politically, economically, culturally. It’s understandable why seemingly light and airy phrases like the one above are appealing.
Just this past week, I’ve seen two different young people out and about wearing t-shirts with the phrase printed on them.
A quick Instagram search shows there is plenty of appeal for it in broader society.
On the surface it seems like one thing - an innocent desire for a free and liberated life. But scratching below, for me, reveals something else; a denial of the reality of what makes life worth living.
A life without stress is a life without growth.
When we try to remove all of the stress from our life, we create a pathway to constantly staying in one state, or attempting to, and that doesn’t sound like a blessing to me.
Cortisol, known as the stress hormone, is the biological part of our make up that drives our ‘fight or flight’ response. It’s a part of every single one of us, embedded within our physiology. We can’t escape it, or avoid it.
And, when exposed to stress in the right doses, it’s a good thing.
It’s tempting to think of a phrase like ‘fight or flight’ as one that belongs in the past when we had to out-run lions on the savannah. And that’s true; increased heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels provide the energy and focus needed to ready our bodies to fight or flee, crucial physical responses that kept us alive in a very literal way for a thousands of years. And still does today.
But exposure to short-term stress can give us other, more relevant benefits for modern life, too:
Enhanced vigilance and awareness: As I’ve a’ready mentioned, stress can sharpen our senses and improve our ability to detect threats. This can be helpful in avoiding danger or taking quick action.
Increased motivation and focus: But a moderate level of stress can actually enhance our performance and focus in certain situations, such as during exams or when facing deadlines.
Improved immune response: Short-term stress can temporarily boost the immune system, potentially aiding in fighting off infections.
In this way, stress isn’t something to be avoided at all costs; it’s a call to action. It’s your body’s natural way of saying, “Hey, pay attention to this. It could be important, or something you care about.”
Experiencing moments of stress in the run-up to an exam or a presentation isn’t necessarily unnatural; it’s a way of your body saying that the results matter to us. They will likely contribute to what might lie ahead in our lives, and therefore that’s something we likely want to care about.
Exposure to short-term stress prompts us into action.
Action is what drives us forward to achieve or discover new things in life. Without action, we live in stagnation. And our survival instincts have proven that standing still is one of the most dangerous things we can do.
The caveat to this is that chronic stress, constantly being exposed to stressors for long periods of time, can be very detrimental to our physical and mental health. Its impact can depend on the severity of the stressor and the individual's ability to cope. Some people are more susceptible to the negative effects of stress than others.
And evolutionary benefits don't necessarily translate directly to our modern lives. The environments we face now are often very different from those our ancestors encountered, meaning the stress response might not be as beneficial in all situations.
And that’s why it becomes important to be aware of the role of stress, and to pay attention to what we’re willing to be stressed by, and what we’re not.
If you really love your job, and career progression is a positive motivator in your life, then the short-term stress of preparing for a big presentation is going to prompt you into action to do as good a job as you can.
But if you hate your job, and the only reason you’re still in it is to prove yourself to others in your life, then the stress of that presentation is more likely to contribute to chronic, long term stress over time.
In other words, the question we want to hold in our minds when thinking about stress is:
What are you willing to choose to make important in your life?
Because once we choose to make something important in our life, we are choosing to say, “I care about this thing, and I accept the responsibilities that comes with.” And when we care about something, we’re likely to experience short-term moments of stress around that thing. And that’s natural. The stress drives us to take action in the thing we care about.
That sounds useful.
But if we are continually feeling stressed about something we know deep down isn’t important in our life, then it’s a sign that perhaps we should be letting something go.
How to use this in your life:
Start with trying to notice and be aware of physical feelings of stress, without immediately reacting to them.
This should feel like , “Oh, I’m feeling a tightening in my chest, or my heart beating faster, or blood rushing to my head. I am feeling stress.”
And then ask yourself, “Why?”
If the answer is because it’s something you care about, then you can move from stress to action.
“What can I do to respond to the stress?”
Maybe it means revising your presentation one more time, or taking a deep breathe and telling yourself that you can do this.
And if the answer is that you’re stressed about something you don’t really care about, ask yourself, “Can I let this go?", reminding yourself that if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world for you.
Short-term stress can bless, if we choose to let it do so.