Stress Advantage

Today we are going to discuss how to use stress to your advantage instead of the way that we have always viewed it.

The following is a list of some of the health risk of stress.

It affects the blood cells that help you fight off infection. These same cells fight cancer cells. They also protect vital nutrient absorption.

Stress causes chronic fatigue, headaches, back pain and digestive upsets.

It increases blood pressure which increases the risk of having a stroke or heart attack.

Stress makes asthma worse.

Stress triggers poor decisions such as drinking too much, eating too much, smoking, and drug abuse.

Stress makes it harder to make decisions that will improve your health.

Bad stress makes you feel horrible. Now, what about good stress? Yes, you just heard me say good stress. Stress is a natural thing and should occur in our lives to be healthy and productive. That’s right I said that stress makes us healthy and productive. Stress produces hormones that our body uses for energy. Stress produces what we refer to as adrenaline. Adrenaline helps us preform task quickly. The problem is when we overload the system. The problem is when the feeling of stress does not pass through our perspective filter. When we think of stress we instantly think of it as a negative word. So, our mind tells the rest of our body to act accordingly. We become “stressed out.”

You can take the emotions of stress and turn them into a ruined day. You can create many bad decisions as a direct result of how you chose to view stress. You can harm yourself and others. People have allowed stress to put them in the hospital. Stress has caused people to lose their tempers and hurt other verbally and physically. Stress has ruined days and ruined lives.

I bet you never thought about using stress to your advantage. If you put the word stress through the perspective filter you will realize that it is much like the word fear. You will realize that it is only a word and you have control over your reaction to it.

So, go ahead cram stress into the perspective filter and squeeze out a positive word on the other side. Every time you start to feel stress building up I want you to do two things. I want you to realize that it is your bodies way of preparing you for action. Your body is getting ready for good things to happen. So, use it. When you start to feel stress do not waste the adrenaline rush that you have been given. Go and accomplish something. The second thing is that I want you to go look in the mirror and smile, fake it if you have to. Smile until you believe that you should. Look in the mirror and see the smile that you lost. When we let emotions take over our mind we forget who we are. We do not see reality as we should. When we look in the mirror and see the smile we will remember that life is worth smiling about. We will also see that the snarl on our face is not a pretty site.