The Signs You’re Stressed
Stress gets in our way nearly every day. Maybe it’s…
- receiving hurtful criticism
- spilling coffee on your computer when you have a deadline
- the death of someone close to you
- getting caught in a maze of voicemail when you just want to ask a quick question
- trying to pack for a flight at the same time as getting your young kids dressed, fed, washed, and ready…aaargh!
If you feel stress doesn’t affect you every day, you are lucky. There’s one thing you can pretty much be sure of in life—and that’s that you will encounter stressful situations on a regular basis.
But here’s the key: How do you react? Do you smile peacefully throughout, like a Buddhist monk meditating in a temple? Do you yell and throw stuff? Do you sit stiff-lipped, while feeling your heart pumping and your blood pressure rising? Do you reach for a little something in a bottle or a packet to calm you down?
Do you wish you could be less stressed by stress?
Stress at its core
Before you build skills to manage stress, it helps to know more about it. We experience two general types of stressors:
- acute stressors, or short-term events that cause temporary acute stress, such as getting yelled at by an angry driver or boss
- chronic stressors, which are more general life circumstances that may be causing us long-term, low-level stress, such as overwork
If you suffer from chronic stress, you may find that small things make you flare up more easily than they should—which in turn causes more acute stress. If you feel this way, you’re not alone. You’re a typical modern human being.
Symptoms of stress
If you suffer from any of these symptoms, you may be showing the physical signs of too much stress.
- Irritability and/or bad temper
- Difficulty getting up in the mornings
- Fatigue
- Sensitivity to criticism
- Difficulty sleeping
- An annoying late-evening “second wind” after having been tired all day
- Lingering colds and other minor illnesses
- Low libido
- Indigestion
- Poor memory and concentration
- Headaches
- High blood pressure
- Feeling dizzy when you stand up (a sign of low blood pressure caused by adrenal exhaustion)
- Depression
- Unexplained aches and pains
- Reliance on alcohol, coffee, or tranquillizers
- Sugar or salt cravings
The people in the Longevity Hot Spots tend to be free of these types of symptoms. Why? They are less subject to the modern stressors we have to put up with.
- Instead of daily commutes through traffic, they have lovely winding paths in beautiful scenery with perhaps the odd goat rambling past.
- Instead of work deadlines, they pick fruit together or go out fishing.
- They don’t have mortgages or alarm clocks or voice mail mazes to deal with.
They are the kind of people who, when a minor mishap happens such as breaking something or tripping, they don’t feel annoyed—they just laugh.
Nobody in a Longevity Hot Spot is entirely exempt from stressors, however, and many of the hot spot populations practice relaxation techniques, which we can borrow. Meditation, martial arts, plenty of exercise, laughing about problems with friends and family, having spiritual beliefs and having therapeutic hobbies—these are all things practiced in the hot spots that lower stress levels.
And they are all things we can do, too. Keeping physically healthy with the right diet and exercise, as the people in the Longevity Hot Spots do, also makes us much more able to deal with stress. Just think about how you deal with stress when you are hungry and tired versus when you feel good. It can make all the difference.
