Stress is necessary.
It’s one of the most basic fundamental principles of training. Stress-Recover-Adapt-Grow. Without stress we become stagnant and soft.
The same principle exists in other parts of life. The person who avoids any kind of stress, be it mental, emotional, spiritual or otherwise, stands little chance of actually growing in those areas. If you strive to create a life absent of any kind of stress or strain there is no stimulus for growth. If you strive for a life of extreme comfort where you search for nothing, learn nothing and physically do nothing then you may find at the end of it you are an empty vessel void of any real substance.
It’s easy to understand this physically. It’s also easy to see the results when someone does not add physical stress to their lives. Apply the same strategy to the other parts of your life.
Learn! From the day you are born to the day you die, never stop learning. Never stop finding new things to learn. It’s the best mental stress you can give yourself.
Grappling with bigger picture questions is a great stress. Challenge your own ideas of what it all means and why we are here. Listen to other people’s ideas of why we are here and what it all means. Hard wiring your belief system into a fixed state ignores the possibility that maybe there are other possibilities. There are billions of people and just as many belief systems.
Emotional stress is also not a bad thing- granted in heavy doses or abusive situations it is definitely not. But emotional stress can make us tougher, wiser and more able to handle future emotional stresses. Everyone falls in love as a teenager and pretty much everyone has their heart broken early in life. Be thankful for that, it’s part of growing emotionally.
Stress in extreme forms is not good. Everything has a breaking point and that is not the goal. Whether it’s physical, mental, spiritual, emotional….there needs to be ongoing recovery in order to allow the growth or you just end up breaking.
Stress-Recovery-Adaptation-Growth
