You’re doing the stress wrong
Your muscles do the stress right:
-muscle is stressed
-it adapts (by growing and/or becoming stronger)
-it is now more adapted to handle that stressor
You make one of the two mistakes with how you work with stress:
-you don’t stress yourself appropriately
-or you don’t adapt
Stress is a good thing.
It means you’re not dead but alive. Existence is stress. Stress means you’re stressing the system, EXPANDING. To live is to expand, to grow and evolve and elevate.
Stress is a good thing.
You dub it a bad thing because it doesn’t feel good.
You are taught that it must feel good because that’s when you’re nice, docile, and drugged with pills and booze and entertainment.
And you are taught that it must feel good — because your ancestors who created this wonderful world for you — didn’t want you to go through the same pain that they did. However they failed to realise that comfort without stress is just death.
You are taught that it must feel good therefore you hate stress.
…and nevertheless you get stress,
Because existence is stress,
So when REAL challenges are no longer there to stress you — you are stressed over any nonsense.
And because you didn’t have appropriate stress to appropriately cause you to adapt and become strong — you are WEAK now.
Therefore to avoid stress is to GET STRESS ANYWAY. You’re just delaying it.
You may avoid stress and get depression instead. You become so weak that you can’t even leave your bed.
So we do the stress wrong,
First by avoiding it.
Second by failing to adapt.
Let’s start by adapting to the stress you already experience.
You do it wrong. You escape the symptoms of stress — rather than address the stress by becoming stronger.
Your muscle does it right. Under stress — it adapts and becomes stronger.
Whatever stresses you — solve that problem, and SOLVE it 10 TIMES OVER. This is how you become adapted.
The next step is to stop avoiding stress.
This we also do wrong. Avoiding something doesn’t solve it! So when I say adapt — I mean deal with it in such a way that it is no longer a problem. NOT avoid it or deny it.
Stressors are a WONDERFUL invitation to become stronger.
And they are EVERYWHERE,
Every “negative” feeling, sensation, belief we have about something — is an INVITATION to explore it.
Dislike, reluctance, scepticism, “cringe”, anxiety, awkwardness, fear — ALL of those are INVITATIONS.
To stress yourself and become strong
Now, last but not least, “ADAPT” is easier said then done,
You don’t merely “fight” the stressor.
Failure to adapt is not merely failing to “stand up and fight”, failure to be strong.
The stressor may very well be TOO STRONG for you to ADAPT right now. You will not only NOT adapt — you will hurt yourself.
Obviously the first step is to stop running away.
The next step is to break down the problem to smaller problems — which you can actually tackle.
E.g. before you set about lifting 100kg — lift 50kg first.
And please understand what it ACTUALLY means to “handle something”, what it actually means to ADAPT.
It’s not just you barely succeeding.
The stressor is STRESSFUL — UNTIL you adapted.
After you adapted — it should no longer be “stressful”. It should be… stimulating.
You will delude yourself about how well you are handling stress — when actually you’re barely getting by. You’re just so intoxicated and unconscious that you no longer realise it. Your chronic stress is killing you, and you’re neither thriving nor striving and growing.
You only know you handled it once it became QUITE EASY, and quite STIMULATING.
You know you handled it when you sleep well at night.
You know you handled it when you’re BORED without it. When watching TV is BORING to you — because it’s far more exciting to do some real things in the real world. And when those real things in the real world don’t actually feel like fighting for your fucking life.
We do both mistakes, all the time!
Avoiding some stressors as thought they would instantly kill us. Sometimes absurdly puny stressors.
And then we fail to ADAPT to those stressors we actually have in our lives: either through avoidance, or through pride and ambition, or through unhealthy ideas about stress.
AGAIN — STRESS is NOT the default. Stress was something you used to feel when running away from a fucking sabre toothed tiger. It is NOT the default.
We now take it for granted but we shouldn’t.
You should handle your stressors to the point that it’s a JOKE to your.
And THEN take more stress.
If you’re constantly feeling stress — that means you’re NOT learning anything, NOT adapting at all.
And if you’re never stressed — then you’re just postponing a spectacular collapse.
Finally — don’t NORMALISE the emotion of stress.
This ties in to the previous point.
We get so used to being “stressed” that it becomes our baseline.
It should NOT be a baseline.
But now it became a habit.
Therefore you must be VERY VIGILANT of your BAD EMOTIONAL HABITS.
If you’re doing everything right and are WELL ADAPTED to the stressor you’re dealing with — then you SHOULD have your stress levels under control.
If not — then maybe the stressor is too big indeed.
Or maybe — you’re just ADDICTED to being stressed.
You’re addicted to your little “stressful life” sob story.
No one cares about your sob story and neither should you. You should care about becoming stronger, care about your outcomes.
So break the habit of this emotion of being stressed.
It’s INEFFICIENT to burn energy feeling stress for no good reason.
GET TRULY stressed — then “feel” a bit of this “stressfulness” feeling — then ADAPT — and feel no stress. This is how you do it
This is how you do it:
-STRESS yourself
-ADAPT
-Become AS COMFORTABLE under that particular stressor as though it was never there
-Find NEW STRESSORS, and STRESS YOURSELF again
-ADAPT
-Repeat