Everyone has to end up dealing with stress from time to time, and the particular stressful events that you might have to contend with in your life can range all the way from things that are relatively minor annoyances, to issues that could seem difficult – if not impossible – to move past.
While serious sources of stress will tend to require a good deal of care and attention to deal with, however, many of the more everyday stresses that we experience in life can end up affecting us in a number of different ways, some of which are more negative, and some of which are potentially even positive.
To a significant degree, the way we end up reacting to stressful events in our lives can end up determining whether that stress ends up wearing us down, or whether we can find ways to actively turn that stress into energy and motivation.
Here are just a few tips for turning stress into energy and motivation.
Tackle one obstacle at a time, and experience a boost in energy and personal agency when you beat it
It’s been said sometimes in motivational and self-development circles, that whenever you overcome an obstacle, you “absorb it’s power.”
When it comes to dealing with obstacles in your life, this can certainly end up seeming to be the case.
Typically, when you first find yourself confronting an obstacle, it will be daunting, stressful, and you may well find yourself naturally drawn to find ways to avoid taking action or approaching the obstacle altogether.
If and when you actually manage to tackle and overcome the obstacle, however, you will tend to experience a significant boost in energy and your sense of personal agency, and this naturally comes with elevated motivation and positivity as well.
In order to achieve these benefits, begin carefully and systematically tackling one obstacle at a time in your life that is bothering you. This might be as relatively straightforward as finally contacting a pest control specialist to help you deal with an infestation you might be facing.
Ultimately, tackling and overcoming obstacles can go a long way towards helping to transform stress into energy and a sense of capability.
Reframe the stressful experience into something that helps to aid your growth
The way that you choose to frame a stressful experience, in your own mind, can actually have a lot to do with how that experience makes you feel.
If you end up viewing a challenging experience as something stressful and detrimental, the natural consequence of this is that you will feel more stressed, overwhelmed, and probably also significantly more frustrated and upset than you otherwise would.
In some cases, however, consciously reframing a stressful experience, in your own mind, as something that helps to aid your growth and that will help you to improve yourself, can cause you to feel a lot more “up for the challenge,” as opposed to simply feeling disheartened and overwhelmed.
Voluntarily expose yourself to controlled doses of different stressors on a regular basis
The concept of “hormesis” suggests that certain stressors – taken on voluntarily, in doses that are neither too small, nor too dramatic and overwhelming – can have a variety of different health benefits.
This isn’t just a theory, either. Exercise essentially works by introducing a limited amount of stress to the body, that stresses the nervous system, inflicts small amounts of damage to muscle cells, and more, and which ends up being healthy.
In recent times, more and more attention has been given to various practices such as cold water immersion, or occasional fasting, that seem to have the ability to help make individuals more resilient to stress, while also conferring certain health and mood benefits.
Voluntarily exposing yourself to controlled doses of different stressors, on a regular basis, may help to make you more resilient to the negative effects of stress as a whole.
Make sure that you find what you are doing meaningful
As a general rule of thumb, the more meaningful you find whatever it is you’re doing in your life, the more resilient to stress you will tend to be with regard to that particular path, pastime, or activity.
When you’re faced with a stressful challenge when in the pursuit of something that you genuinely care about and believe in, it’s significantly more likely that you’ll double down and experience a boost to resolve, as opposed to just feeling totally overwhelmed and backing off.
Of course, part of what this means is that it’s important to make sure that you find what you are doing with your life meaningful and that if not, you make some changes so that you do.
The Coastal Mummy 