Garret Gillespie

I’ve been reading The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz and they struck me with a new attitude about stress. Instead of reiterating the common convention of suggesting ways to remove stress from our lives, the authors make the point that true growth comes through balancing stress and recovery. This point hit me pretty strongly.

How often do you hear yourself or someone close to you express how stressed out they are? It seems like we’re constantly trying to figure out ways to remove the stress from our lives. Life just keeps moving faster and faster and the competition to survive just gets tougher. Even in medicine, it seems as though the diagnosis for everything from the common cold to a heart attack is too much stress in your life. The drive to escape the stresses in our lives compels far too many to find their escape through harmful means. Amidst all the excitement and the seeking of escape from the stresses of daily life, have you ever taken the time to consider the benefits you can reap from those stresses?

Physical development, strength training and weight loss all depend on one’s ability to push the physical body beyond the status quo to a point outside the current comfort zone. In order to increase the load bearing capacity of a muscle, that muscle must be strained beyond what it can comfortably handle. This stress actually damages the muscle. In self-defense and in preparation for possible future stresses, the muscle repairs the microscopic tears that occurred and adds additional muscle fibers. This is the process of muscular development. Pretty common knowledge amongst the body building community.

Have you ever considered how we go about developing ourselves emotionally, intellectually and spiritually?

The same way.

Seriously.

At the same time our society is in the midst of the biggest physical health boom in the history of mankind, we are simultaneously creating a boom in the business of escaping stress. But what if we could find a way to make that stress work for our good. This is the point made in The Power of Full Engagement. Through developing healthy habits and positive rituals in our lives we can harness the growth opportunities hidden within the stress we create in our own lives.

And let’s be honest, very little of the stress in our lives comes solely from outside influences. In most cases the stress we deal with is a direct result of the choices we make.

Just like constant strain on a muscle will eventually tear it beyond repair, constant stress in other aspects of our lives can cause damage that requires significant time and care to repair. The key in physical development is to stress a muscle to its limit, hold it there for an appropriate time and then let it recover. The same is true in our intellectual, emotional and spiritual lives. In order to achieve growth and increase in any area of life, we must push ourselves to a limit, hold at that limit for an appropriate time and then provide time for recovery. How far you need to push yourself in any area, and how long you need to hold that limit depends on where you are and where you want to go.

Constantly seeking escape from all of the stress in your life is a recipe for disappointment and atrophy. Too much unrelenting stress is a recipe for frustration, discouragement and burnout. But developing a program of balancing periods of stress and recovery in the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of our lives provides opportunity for growth beyond our imaginations.

Check out The Power of Full Engagement and manage the stress in your life instead of trying to escape it.