In the time of the Coronavirus Pandemic, now more than ever it’s important to check in with your relationship to stress.
Stress is a form of tension, and having a good relationship to tension is one of the most fundamental pieces of revealing the successful, attractive, FEARLESS Man you have inside you.
In this TED Talk that we often reference when we talk to clients about tension, Kelly McGonigal, a Health psychologist, reverses advice on stress that she’d been giving clients for a decade. She presents research that suggests that your beliefs about stress are the big factor in your health and mortality, NOT how much stress you experience.
Stress can be a really destructive thing for your health. When you perceive a stressor as threatening to you, your body releases cortisol. Among other functions, cortisol is there to protect you. As the University of Utah puts it:
“Cortisol is best known for producing the “fight or flight” response. This reaction evolved as a means of survival, enabling people to react to what could be a life-threatening situation. The change in hormones and physiological responses forces us to either face the threat or leave it behind.”
The problem that caused McGonigal and so many others to advise people to “reduce stress” in their lives is that chronically elevated levels of cortisol – not in life or death situations or even just a fleeting stressful moment here and there – can be very harmful to your longterm health and your life expectancy.
But stepping outside your comfort zone – and into tension – by virtue of itself can be a stressor. It’s also necessary to grow, achieve your goals, and live a truly fulfilling life, so what does that mean for personal growth? And what about dealing with living through this Coronavirus pandemic?
Well, as McGonigal discusses in the TED Talk, she discovered that it’s actually not some objective rating about how much – or how little – stress you have in your life that impacts your health. It’s about how you see and feel about the stress.
And in terms of Covid-19, it’s again about how you see the stressors of this pandemic and its impacts on your life. If you sit and read tons of doomsdayish commentary about what might happen, worry about the what-ifs, and see it all as horrible experience all day every day, that’s doing your health – physically, mentally, and emotionally – no favors, and it’s probably hurting the strength of your immune system, too.
But if you can start to shift your relationship to this time – look for and FEEL INTO how even the stress and challenges can make you a stronger, more resilient and successful, attractive person – along with looking for all the other opportunities this quarantine time provides, then your health and how you deal with stress both in the short-term and longterm can flourish.
