Positive Stress: You Can Make Stress Work For You or Against You

When you understand the concept of Eustress, you take a huge step in improving your quality of life and achieving your personal and professional goals.

Yesterday I had that familiar sense of overwhelm. The feeling that I have so much to do.

If you've ever felt this, then you know that you can feel frozen and not know where to begin. It can be overwhelming when all of the things you've got in front of you are things you actually want to get done.

"Why would that be harder?" you say. Because you're even more driven to take them on and get them done. And yet you can sit there...paralyzed by fear or the sense that you may never get it actually completed.

As I sat there drowning in this stew of fear, motivation, ambition, and dread...I couldn't help but think about the concept of Eustress.

Positive and Negative Stress

I may have talked about stress in other posts here on Steemit. It's a topic that's near and dear to me.

I've had my own struggles with anxiety in the past. I've done some serious soul-searching—both on my own and with the help of coaches and therapists—to try and find out why I seem to always default into "worry mode".

In the work I do with my own clients...teaching them to use exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle to improve their health, overcome chronic pain, and just perform better each day...I emphasize the concept of stress.

I teach them about the different forms that stress can take, which include physical, nutritional, psychological, and chemical stressors.

But stress can be both positive and negative. In fact, stress is essential to our everyday performance. We face plenty of stressors coming at us full-speed from our work, family, personal relationships, financial obligations, and other life factors.

So what is Eustress?

The textbook definition of eustress is simply...

"A positive form of stress having a beneficial effect on health, motivation, performance, and emotional well-being"—Merriam-Webster

Examples of Eustress

The fact that I made a choice to write this post and share it here started the eustress ball rolling. I set a deadline. The gears started turning...

"Okay, I'm going to sit down and write a post on positive stress. And I want to publish it before I head out to work. Let's see. That gives me about an hour or so to..."

See what happened there? All of a sudden I had some resistance I was up against. I gave myself a deadline.

More importantly, I had to sit down and actually create something...all the while worrying if it was going to be any good...if I had anything worthwhile to say.

On top of that, I had to get it done before I made my way to work (yet another stressor to face today).

Some examples of eustress are...

• Exercise
• Personal and professional goals (Remember those New Year's resolutions?)
• Deadlines
• Starting a family
• Work promotion (leading to greater responsibilities and higher demands)
• Going on first state (or starting/ending a relationship for that matter)
• Backpacking through the Amazon

What Makes Stress "Positive"?

The reason that stress can be positive is that it forces us to expand ourselves—to push beyond our (usually) self-imposed boundaries.

By setting goals and forcing ourselves to overcome challenges (however big or small), we develop a stronger resistance to those things that resist against us.

Put simply, eustress helps us grow.

Now, it's important to remember that any stressor...be it work or play...can be positive or negative.

Your work may be something you're truly passionate about. So much so that you spend countless hours chipping away at the tasks you have in front of you. Moving closer to the end result little by little...each and every day.

It fulfills you and gives you a sense of purpose. Your work may even have a major impact on others and the world around you.

These are all good things.

But taken too far...working so much that you don't have time to get the rest and recovery you need...or neglect important people in your life...can cause turn this positive stressor into something negative.

Stress and eustress both trigger the body's fight-or-flight system. Adrenaline junkies are just that—people who get off on the release of adrenaline and the rush of being in the "now" and WAY out of their comfort zones.

That's eustress.

But without rest and recovery...without giving the body what it needs to handle all of that "fighting" and "flighting", you begin to wear down.

I mentioned chemical stress above. The constant exposure to your own body's stress hormones can be an example of chemical stress.

The demands you place on your mind and body from working long hours with little sleep...no matter how thrilling whatever you're doing is...is a form of physical stress.

Too much of anything becomes a bad thing.

How to Get the Most Out of Eustress

In order to get consistently positive results from your chosen eustress is to create a strong foundation of health. What does that mean exactly?

Work-to-Rest Ratio

Let's start with work. There's only so much work you can do without needing a break. You simply can't go on forever (no matter how invincible you might think you are).

Your work-to-rest ratio will depend on your unique needs. But at the very least, you should be thinking about how much rest you're giving yourself relative to the work you're doing.

Are you staying up late working on that pet project or side-business? Are you taking breaks during your workday to stretch, move, eat, and hydrate?

Creating an optimal work-to-rest ratio guarantees that whatever positive stress is driving you actually benefits you in the long run.

Energy "Out" Means You Need Energy "In"

(Wo)man cannot live on "hustle" alone. The problem with all this fulfillment we get from the positive stressors in our lives is that we can easily become convinced that it's all we need.

I'm guilty of getting lost in my work and putting my social, exercise, and sometimes even nutritional needs on the back burner.

I'll never forget one day...working at home on the computer..when I'd been working since the early morning and suddenly looked at the clock to see it was about 5 p.m. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was that I realized I hadn't even brushed my teeth yet. Gross!

The energy we expend in work or play must be replenished. Real food is the only source of energy the human body needs. And in order to keep stress positive, you must give yourself the nutrition you need to perform at your very best.

You should be consuming adequate levels of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. These are the essential macronutrients that provide energy (calories) needed to do your work.

Remember to Live

In order to live a healthy and fulfilling life...one that truly motivates you each day...you need to balance ALL aspects of living.

Work, sports, and other positive forms of stress can only be positive when they exist as a part of a multi-faceted life. One where you have the time, energy, and desire to enjoy and share the fruits of your labor with others.

Schedule family time into your days. Make it a point to socialize with friends on a regular basis. Make new friends. Explore new places.

The things you do outside of your chosen endeavors will fuel and inspire the work you do. What you learn by putting yourself into new situations can help you gain insight into new solutions and opportunities related to your passion.

Eustress is positive stress. But it quickly turns negative when you fail to have the balance needed to achieve the best results possible from your boundary-breaking activities.

Think about your own challenges. Which ones are positive and which ones are negative? How can you turn a negative stressor into a positive one?

Understanding how to use stress to work for instead of against you makes your work even more rewarding than it already is and gives you the resources you need to get to the next level of success in everything you do.

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Image: Source; Used under CC0 1.0