Good Stress/Bad Stress…
I saw an article a few months back talking about the benefits of good stress versus the dangers of bad stress. The terms made sense to me at the time, but they’ve come into sharp focus for me in recent weeks…
Good stress is the kind of stress you can do something about and, probably more importantly, feel like you’ve accomplished something afterwards. A deadline or project that you’re working on can be good stress because, while you’re working hard to get there, once you’ve accomplished your goal (hit the deadline, completed the project, etc.) the stress goes away and you feel a sense of accomplishment. That doesn’t mean that the stress you’ve felt won’t be replaced by similar stress for the next deadline or project… simply that you’ve dealt with that stress source and have moved on. This kind of stress can be good for you because it keeps you challenged, keeps you active, gives you that sense of accomplishment.
I’ve got plenty of this good stress happening in my life and, for the most part, have always thrived on it. (When I was waiting tables, the hosts always loved me because I was the guy that never said no to another table. ‘Bring it on, I’d rather be swamped than bored!’ It helped to pass the time in an otherwise tediously boring job.) Today I tend to do the same thing—I’m pretty agreeable to taking on new projects at work. Tends to pass the time.
Of course, good stress can become bad stress when it gets overwhelming… when you’ve got too many deadlines, too many projects, when the deadlines and projects distract you from what you REALLY want to be doing with your life. But that’s the nature of stress. It can get out of hand really easily.
The other type of bad stress, however, is more insidious and harder to deal with because it tends to come from outside pressures that you have little or no control over.
This is the one that’s come back to bite me on the ass lately. I’ve found myself stressing over things that I have no control over, that sometimes only indirectly affect me or that I simply have to accept as “the way things are”, things I should know better than to stress about.
For example…
I get incredibly frustrated with LA drivers. It’s not that they're incompetent—a lot of them obviously are. It’s that they’re so freaking arrogant about their incompetence. But my getting road-rage angry about their stupidity, clueless-ness, rudeness and arrogance isn’t going to change anything—except push my blood pressure up. So this is one of those bad stress things that I have to learn to let go of.
Politics… I tend to get really worked up about a lot of what’s going on in this country right now. I got involved in a lengthy email debate over this last week, which simply served as a reminder as to why I don’t generally discuss politics with my friends. (I tend to get a little too passionate about the discussion and it can go from debate to argument really quickly.) I think we avoided that last week, but I found myself brooding over a lot of what was said for the rest of the day, thinking about points I didn’t make, or didn’t make as well as I wanted to, things that were said that I wanted to clarify and dispute further… an ugly waste of time spent brooding about a discussion that I’m sure everyone else involved had forgotten about ten minutes after we were done. Once more, bad stress because, REALLY, what can my getting worked up over Bush’s foreign policy or domestic abuses (excuse me, policies) accomplish? Exactly, not a damn thing. And yet, here I am, getting anxious, annoyed, angered—stressed-out every time I read the news. Obviously bad stress that I need to shed. (And did you notice I couldn’t avoid a little Bush-bashing even when I’m trying to be serious here?)
And then there’s work crap that doesn’t fall into the good stress category. Demands and expectations that I can’t or won’t meet, and the potential fallout from failing to meet those demands. I’ve been dealing with one of those the past few weeks as well. It’s stupid and it’s silly to be stressed out about it, but I have found myself dwelling on this problem whenever I’ve got a few minutes that my mind isn’t otherwise occupied… doing laundry or litter boxes (no real concentration needed there!) I find myself rehearsing discussions in my head that only serve to get me more worked up and stressed out than the situation deserves. Once again, bad stress has insinuated itself in my life and I really need to learn to let go of this crap once and for all.
Hopefully, now that I’ve got that whole good stress/bad stress thing clear, I can start dumping the bad stress. Cause, really, what’s the point of stressing?
I saw an article a few months back talking about the benefits of good stress versus the dangers of bad stress. The terms made sense to me at the time, but they’ve come into sharp focus for me in recent weeks…
Good stress is the kind of stress you can do something about and, probably more importantly, feel like you’ve accomplished something afterwards. A deadline or project that you’re working on can be good stress because, while you’re working hard to get there, once you’ve accomplished your goal (hit the deadline, completed the project, etc.) the stress goes away and you feel a sense of accomplishment. That doesn’t mean that the stress you’ve felt won’t be replaced by similar stress for the next deadline or project… simply that you’ve dealt with that stress source and have moved on. This kind of stress can be good for you because it keeps you challenged, keeps you active, gives you that sense of accomplishment.
I’ve got plenty of this good stress happening in my life and, for the most part, have always thrived on it. (When I was waiting tables, the hosts always loved me because I was the guy that never said no to another table. ‘Bring it on, I’d rather be swamped than bored!’ It helped to pass the time in an otherwise tediously boring job.) Today I tend to do the same thing—I’m pretty agreeable to taking on new projects at work. Tends to pass the time.
Of course, good stress can become bad stress when it gets overwhelming… when you’ve got too many deadlines, too many projects, when the deadlines and projects distract you from what you REALLY want to be doing with your life. But that’s the nature of stress. It can get out of hand really easily.
The other type of bad stress, however, is more insidious and harder to deal with because it tends to come from outside pressures that you have little or no control over.
This is the one that’s come back to bite me on the ass lately. I’ve found myself stressing over things that I have no control over, that sometimes only indirectly affect me or that I simply have to accept as “the way things are”, things I should know better than to stress about.
For example…
I get incredibly frustrated with LA drivers. It’s not that they're incompetent—a lot of them obviously are. It’s that they’re so freaking arrogant about their incompetence. But my getting road-rage angry about their stupidity, clueless-ness, rudeness and arrogance isn’t going to change anything—except push my blood pressure up. So this is one of those bad stress things that I have to learn to let go of.
Politics… I tend to get really worked up about a lot of what’s going on in this country right now. I got involved in a lengthy email debate over this last week, which simply served as a reminder as to why I don’t generally discuss politics with my friends. (I tend to get a little too passionate about the discussion and it can go from debate to argument really quickly.) I think we avoided that last week, but I found myself brooding over a lot of what was said for the rest of the day, thinking about points I didn’t make, or didn’t make as well as I wanted to, things that were said that I wanted to clarify and dispute further… an ugly waste of time spent brooding about a discussion that I’m sure everyone else involved had forgotten about ten minutes after we were done. Once more, bad stress because, REALLY, what can my getting worked up over Bush’s foreign policy or domestic abuses (excuse me, policies) accomplish? Exactly, not a damn thing. And yet, here I am, getting anxious, annoyed, angered—stressed-out every time I read the news. Obviously bad stress that I need to shed. (And did you notice I couldn’t avoid a little Bush-bashing even when I’m trying to be serious here?)
And then there’s work crap that doesn’t fall into the good stress category. Demands and expectations that I can’t or won’t meet, and the potential fallout from failing to meet those demands. I’ve been dealing with one of those the past few weeks as well. It’s stupid and it’s silly to be stressed out about it, but I have found myself dwelling on this problem whenever I’ve got a few minutes that my mind isn’t otherwise occupied… doing laundry or litter boxes (no real concentration needed there!) I find myself rehearsing discussions in my head that only serve to get me more worked up and stressed out than the situation deserves. Once again, bad stress has insinuated itself in my life and I really need to learn to let go of this crap once and for all.
Hopefully, now that I’ve got that whole good stress/bad stress thing clear, I can start dumping the bad stress. Cause, really, what’s the point of stressing?
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