Stop Trying To Live Stress Free

Stress destroys more people than most other factors combined. It’s the arch-enemy of longevity. Staying in the leadership game is increasingly difficult when more and more responsibility gets put on your shoulders. This becomes a catch-22 because there’s a part of you that wants to level up your leadership capacity, but another part that doesn’t want the added pressure that comes with it. What’s a leader to do?

Let me share this interesting thought:

Embrace Stress Rather Than Try To Eliminate It

You’ll never eliminate stress. It will always remain in this life. In fact, if you don’t feel a little stress you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough. The issue is not that you have stress, the real issue is how you handle it. If you are looking for a stress-free environment…you will never find it; it doesn’t exist. Even if you found a “non-stress” environment, you’ll find something to stress about. Stress is relative. It always follows you no matter where you go.

Stress occurs when we experience something out of our perceived control. Our bodies release high levels of Cortisol (the stress hormone) when we sense danger. This rise in Cortisol elicits a flight or fight response in the moment. We either lean into the perceived danger or run away from it. You can’t control perceived danger, but you can control how you respond to it. Highly successful people are not immune to stress, they just have learned how to harness it for positive results. It’s all a matter of perspective. The word S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D is just D-E-S-S-E-R-T-S spelled backward. Change your perspective and you change the meaning. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is not what happens to them, but how they respond to what happens to them.

When you lean into the situation that is causing stress you can fight through it. Choosing to embrace stress as an indicator that you are doing something you’ve never done can be liberating rather than limiting. Think back in your life to a time when a certain task or situation stressed you out, but now doesn’t. The reason you don’t feel stress about it anymore is that you learned how to deal with it. You are now confident, and therefore, not stressful about the situation anymore. Stress is really just an opportunity for you to grow and expand your ability to accomplish something you’ve never done. After all, you’ll never get to where you want to go if you don’t do something you’ve never done.

Don’t buy into the myth that the goal of life is to live stress-free. Rather, buy into the truth that you can live free in the midst of stress. You don’t have to feel overwhelmed by stress when you handle it correctly. Let stress tip you off that you have an opportunity to grow and get better.