I just read an interesting article about the impact of stress in our lives.  And yes – stress is certainly an issue.  But sometimes I think we forget that there are two parts to the impact of stress…

Stress – in and of itself- isn’t a “bad” thing. It’s what makes us stronger, faster, more educated, closer in our relationships, etc. Rather, stress is only a problem when the amount of stress exceeds our capacity to tolerate it.

Too often, we focus on the outside issues (the stress) rather than enhancing our own ability to tolerate that outside stress. Take a triathlete, for example. As a new participant, running a 10K after the swim and the bike portion of the event is “stressful.” It’s difficult – maybe to the point of dropping out or walking. But the solution obviously isn’t reducing the distance of the race.  That individual would never complain to the race director that “the stress of the race was just too long – you should shorten it.”  Instead, the solution is training more effectively and eating better – and the result is a faster and more positive race result. It wasn’t the stress, it was the individual’s ability to tolerate that stress that was the “problem.”

We live in a time when individuals have lost sight of the basics. Staying up late at night, eating junk food throughout the day and night, experiencing caffeine overload on a daily basis, and combining all of this with little or no regular physical activity has put a large portion of the population in a state where it takes very little “stress” to push us over the edge (because we’re basically standing ON the edge to begin with).

So, while it’s valuable to examine the outside stressors and see what we can do to improve conditions, schedules, ergonomics, etc, I’d encourage us to start with ourselves. Get back to the basics. Before blaming the outside stressors, take a few months to get ourselves back off “the edge” physically. Eliminate the caffeine…start exercising regularly…make healthy selections when eating and drinking…stay on a regular sleep pattern…and THEN see how we tolerate the stress.

I have a feeling that just like the triathlete in the example above, that 10K that was “exhausting” in the first (limited training) race, will become little more than an easy warm-down when the body is prepared for the stress that is laid on us.

We clearly don’t have control over all of the stress around us.  But we can – in many ways – prepare ourselves to tolerate that stress at a much greater level, right?