Image courtesy of messiaen

This is the third part in a series on managing stress. The first article gave you an overview on what stress is and the two different ways to decrease stress in your life. The second article looked more closely at the first way to decrease stress which is to lower stress input. It also defined what input is. In this third article on managing stress, I will discuss the second way of lowering stress in your life - that is to increase your stress capacity.

From the first two articles, we can conclude:

• For any given system (our body), input = stress = load = demand.
• For every input (stress), there is an equal amount of ouput (work).
• For any given amount of stress (load) that your body takes in, its ability to handle that load is dependent on its stress capacity.
• In order for your body to maintain balance, all input that is taken in must have a corresponding output - that is equal in force (energy).
• Stress capacity is the total amount of work our body can produce.
• Our body is an energy convertor, transforming input energy (stress) into output energy (work).
• The more efficient you are, the less "wasted" energy your body produces.
• There are only two fundamental ways to decrease stress:
1. Lower input
2. Increase load (stress) capacity
• The energy that you take in is channelled through your 5 senses: sight, taste, sound, smell and touch and converted by your body into another form of energy called work or production.
• Stress Overload: an unhealthy state where our body is taking in more input (stress) than it can handle (output). The cure for stress overload is to decrease your stress input.
• Burnout: The unhealthy physical manifestation of an excessive build up of energy, due to continual stress overload on the body.

The paradox of increasing your stress capacity

We've already defined that the second of the fundamental ways to lower your stress is to increase your stress capacity. Stress capacity is essentially your output capacity, that is the total amount of work that your body can produce. So how do you increase your stress capacity? Well, you can see that in order to increase your stress capacity, you will need to be able to increase your total body output. And we've already concluded that all output must first have input. So, in order to increase your stress capacity, you need to increase your output, which means that you need to first increase your input. In other words, you must first stress your body so that you can increase its stress capacity. It sounds a little illogical doesn't it? Or paradoxical, but that is the nature of life. Confused? Good!

Lets peer deeper into the rabbit hole, shall we? Think of all the ways that you grow. Did the growth happen by itself? Was it isolated? If you look closely, you can see that it required input or stress. There is no way around this. For you to get smarter, you must input knowledge into your brain. For you to grow bigger, you must input food into your body. For you to grow stronger, you must input weight onto your muscles. For you to grow as a human being, you must input experiences into your life. The result of all this input is to cause growth - or an increase in your stress capacity. Think about it. Does a plant grow by itself? No, it needs input in the form of water, sunlight and nutrients from the soil.

How do you grow?

Growth is whenever you go beyond your current level. For you to go beyond your current level, you must do something you've never done before. Think about it, if you do not do anything new, then you are not surpassing your current level - you remain at or below your level. In order to exceed this level, you need to do something you've never done before. Therefore, whenever you grow, you are experiencing something new. As such, we can say that for you to increase your stress capacity, you must not just input stress, but you must input new stress. That is, you must input stress that you've never experienced before.

It is this concept that drives us as human beings - we are always seeking to surpass our current level - our current understanding, our current situation, our current physical conditioning or our current state of being. Think about the history of mankind. Always growing, always taking the next step, never back-tracking. We do not move backwards, we are moving forwards. This isn't isolated to human beings either - it is all around us. In nature. Life in general - the Universe. It is growth, it is expansion, it is always a new condition - and in the next moment it is another new condition, always advancing. Some call it evolution or life force or God. I simply call it Movement. Life is Movement.

Grow by surpassing your current stress capacity

For you to increase your stress capacity, you must first stress your body up-to and beyond its limiting capacity. That is, you must stress your system to its current stress capacity, and then stress it beyond that point in order for you to increase your stress capacity. At that point when you've stressed your body beyond its current stress capacity, you are inputting new stress.

Is this even possible? As we saw with the table analogy from the first article, if you input stress over a system's stress capacity, that system will collapse, or crash. So the trick for growth is to balance that line between increased stress capacity and the possibility of crashing the system. In medicine, this is known as "risk vs. reward" Every drug, as input has the reward of benefiting the system (therapy), or the risk of hurting the system (side effects). That is the way with all input, there is both a reward and a risk. Even with what we would normally consider to be healthy input. Think about it. Exercise is a form of input. We would all consider this to be a good form of input right? But how much exercise is good for you? If you exercise too much, or improperly, you can do more harm (risk) than good (reward). Same goes with nutrition and diet. "Protein is good for you so eat as much as you want". We can see the harm with this type of thinking.

You can see that this is not an easy question to answer. Also, there is not one "right" answer. I think the only answer to this question is: "it depends". I know it sounds like a cop-out, but truthfully, it DOES depend. What does it depend on? It depends on the system itself. Not all systems are created the same. Not all systems are at the same level. There are so many different factors that make up a system - that it would be virtually impossible to test out all the variables in a scientific way. In other words, it depends on you - you are the sytem. You are a unique individual with a unique body. You have a different make up than I do. I cannot tell you what will work best for you. I can only tell you what has been shown, through experience, to work best for me.

This is why I feel that there is no one right way to grow (increase stress capacity). Think about this, how many people do you know that are on the prescription drug Paxil? It has done a lot of good for people in treating them of their depression. But also, it has done a lot of harm with a few people in that it has been shown to increase the risk of suicide. Now, if I were to tell you that Paxil is the the best way to treat depression, and you took the medicine and it helped you would you believe me? What if you were one of the few who is harmed by it? Be weary of self-help, or anything for that matter that advocates itself as the "right way" or the "only way."

In my article, Wny: the Most Important Question You can Ask Yourself. I said that once you answer the question of "why", the "how" will automatically reveal itself. In other words, no one can tell you the "how" - that is something only you can figure out for yourself. Something that works for one person, may not work for someone else. The best way to test if it works for you IS to TEST if it works for you.

Overview

I hope you can now see stress in a new perspective. As you can see stress is necessary for growth. We cannot eliminate all stress in our lives. In fact, stress is necessary for growth. We can however, learn to see what stress is, how we can manage it and how we can use it for our benefit to help us grow as human beings. Lowering your input is one way to decrease stress. You can see how this technique can give you immediate results. For longer-term solutions, you will need to increase your stress capacity, that is the ability of your body to handle stress and produce output. How you do this is dependent on inputting new stress in your body while keeping in mind, the potential harm it may cause as well. Realize, that all of life is in a continual Movement - a growth process. As part of this life process, you are also in a continual Movement, always advancing, always growing - either in a healthy way, or an unhealthy way. The choice is yours to decide.