Training Design Blog: Stress

I posted this on our blog but I wanted to start sharing here as well!
I'll be posting things from the blog and my personal writing that I occasionally post on my personal blog.
I'm honestly not that much of a blogger, I just like to write about introspection.
So if that speaks to anyone I'll be content!

Here we go:

As modern daily life ticks by we're seeing our understanding grow about stress.
And in our inherent need to categorize things and put a stamp on it, we've “kind of” (read: totally) over simplified the concept of stress. You, the organism, needs stress. Stress isn't good or bad, it can have positive effects or negative effects and maybe that's where the confusion stems from. Add the different kinds of stressors on there and now people got lost completely.
Aiming to live a stress free life is admittedly a bad aim, and I've found myself in the same boat thinking I'd like to live stress free, preferably elope to the mountains never to be seen again. But alas it was but an illusion.

We don't need stress free environments, we just need to consider what type of stress we want in our lives. The stress we can control. I'm not talking about random stress events that occur throughout our life, but the things we have a hand in ourselves.
Like acute stress and chronic stress.
Most of modern society are tied to hum of the beehive. There's always something, work, kids, this, that, a seemingly new threat of an emerging extremist fraction or a new world war. Nothing around you leaves a moment of reprieve, like the Chinese water drip torture. Continuous drops of stress impacting between the eyes. It will range from the most mundane first world problems to things that events that might occur anywhere in the world.
In counter opposite to our ancestors that didn't carry the world on their shoulders, or in their mobile device. According to what we know there was very little chronic stress for them, meaning that the stressful events were usual of short duration and more intense. If a leopard tried to make me a meal, I'd think that pretty intense too.
Our nervous system is still attuned to the stress model of our ancestors, which is not something that seems to dawn on the general population. Although we are still evolving as a species, the time frame in which that takes place is much larger than the pace we're advancing in. Hence your nervous system is being tricked into seeing leopards everywhere!

You might be thinking: That's all fine and well, but now what?!
Well, taking a page out of my own book. I at my admittedly young age was running to and fro, trying to balance 2 jobs with my training, girlfriend, financial situation, family and friends at home, my health. Those were too many balls to keep up in the air for a sustained period of time, so they started dropping. Nothing too cataclysmic except for me running into the wall and having a mini burn out. Good thing it happened in the summer when my workload is at it's lowest.
So I got the message load and clear, rework and structure my days that allows for reprieve. Also So I can actually do the things I like to do. Looking ahead and seeing the social structures change, I'll be working way past my 60's. I'm sure as hell not gonna hold off on everything until retirement. I designed my days to my desires. If it's easy to do, it's easy to maintain. With the way things are looking we might not actually have the retirement our parents have enjoyed, so unless basic income becomes a reality, we'll work well into old age. Why not take the stress off by designing your work around what you'd like to do with your life. Falls into that: If you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. But still, I'm guessing your interests are broader than your job. Of course another road to take would be to attempt to create different incomes and passive incomes. With most people living under financial stress, yours truly included, it would bode well to do exactly that.

Now I'm tackling stress from the societal level, reality is perception right? So maybe we ought to change our perception on stress. Stoicism and zen Buddhism do a pretty good job of that.
We've given stress a negative connotation, but it need not be so. Stressors are what's keeping you alive, no stimuli equals stagnation and entropy. I'm not suggesting you climb the zoo fence to get your close encounter with the leopards, but maybe instead you keep challenging yourself. Start with moving, seriously, nothing better than expanding your brain plasticity by trying different forms of training and movement. I personally like to make my own challenges I think are fun, hiking trolltunga in a fasted state, joining MMA and submission wrestling, swimming in freezing Fjord water, I like a lot of it in the physical realm, Which are all different stressors, all things my organism needs to adapt to. It also makes those moments of rest/reprieve/ recovery all the sweeter. Managing stress is partially about taking you back to the present moment, also I'm starting to detest that way of describing it. I wanna use stress, not manage it. When you're getting punched in the face I'm not thinking about the holes in bookings, when I jump in freezing water I'm not thinking about my expenses. The other aspect is about how we perceive stress in general and different ways to cope with it. I like the stoic approach, because it's pretty down to earth. Positive thinking is also a possibility. There's still a lot that we just don't know about the capacity of our own brains, but suffice to say, it's a catalyst of immense power. There's no one size fits all stress alchemy, you're gonna have to experiment what works for you. Move, meditate, breathe, read about different strategies and studies about stress.

Lifestyle design is a big part of this blog, and this I feel it's most important subject. Both me (Sim) and Damian have the possibility to design/structure our day as we'd like. So we both have time to do the things we like and keep us occupied with other things like for myself Krav Maga and for Damian model shoots. Sofia has a little more wiggle room as well, either starting earlier or later so she can train before or after work. The take away point here is that we try to design our lifestyle so it allows us room to train and then to do what we would like to do. The time spent training is of course highly individual. It took the 3 of us some time to be able to do that though, hard work and patience so we could get to a position where it's possible to do so. And so can you!