Intentional Stress: Measure
Leverage stress to build resilience.
Intentional Stress
There may be no word more ripe for a reframe than stress.
Stress is inevitable. It is also invaluable.
Stress narrows focus, increases energy, and is required for growth. Chronically mismanaged stress, on the other hand, causes countless problems such as increased all-cause mortality risk and decreased performance in any domain.
Aspects of life are undoubtedly difficult yet we often make it much harder than it needs to be. Modern life makes self-regulation difficult. Unproductive beliefs, false assumptions, information overload, prolonged rumination, irrational fears, resistance to change, and endless temptation all amplify unnecessary stress.
We know chronic stress without recovery can have detrimental effects on your health. Avoidance of stress, however, produces the same effect.
Stress is a physiologic prediction of or response to something you care about. If it doesn’t perceptually matter or affect you, it doesn’t stress you. This is true of the mind, body, and soul. Stress is neither good nor bad. Stress becomes harmful when it is chronically mismanaged, unsupported by adequate recovery, or viewed as threatening.
Your understanding of and belief about stress ultimately determines whether or not it can be used to your benefit.
The brain is a predicting mechanism that is continuously attempting to keep us alive and well through a process called allostasis - the central adjustment of internal systems based on need anticipation to meet demands. The brain consistently filters incoming signals and uses past experience to influence its prediction of what is needed in a given situation. Following events, the mind continues to encode and recode based on the result.
The process of allostasis and the stress response are extremely prone to adaptation based on continued experience.
The mind can be trained to better predict and effectively respond to challenge by intentionally using stress as a stimulus. Cultivate new experiences with stress to create productive predictions and subsequent responses.
I’ve been teaching resilience for more than ten years. Initially trained in stress management, I quickly determined that simply managing stress is insufficient. Rather than teach methods to effectively respond to stress, how can one proactively prepare to leverage its benefit? The answer is simple - use it.
Resilience is the ability to effectively function with, recover from, and improve because of stress.
We all have the capacity to be resilient.
To train the skill of resilience, you must induce stress intentionally at a manageable level with prepared strategies for the purpose of getting more comfortable at what initially caused discomfort.
Your attitude toward stress dictates your resilience in response to it. The more you attempt to avoid stress, the more significant mild stressors become. The more you embrace stress, the more capable you become in response to future stressors.
Resilience isn’t possible without stress just as courage isn’t possible without fear.
At the beginning of every month, I create a fitness challenge to build resilience. Physical training is one of my favorite ways to gain wisdom from intentional stress. It is, however, just one of the many ways you can leverage the stress response for growth.
The mission of this series is to explore methods of training mental, social, and spiritual resilience without physical exertion. Counterintuitively, there is a method I often recommend to those who are interested in beginning to workout that doesn’t involve physical exertion of any kind. Rather than suggest a particular workout or program, there is a self-assessment that reveals opportunities outside of scheduled exercise that produces a much higher return on investment.
Previously, I’ve explored the benefits of creating a mission statement and determining your core values. Knowing your current Why and prioritized How is essential to figuring out What to do proactively or reactively. The method I suggest to people who want to get in better shape can apply to any domain of life.
Let’s first reveal the simple way to begin getting in better shape and then apply it to systematically making your core values a progressive and consistent reality.
