A Brief Look at Pressure World Wide
Both stress and pressure, often used synonymously, are
no stranger to any of us. Simply being
born into this world is a stressful event.
Going through the motions of life can involve a lot of pressure. If things are going well, we feel pressure to
sustain that state of being. If things
aren’t going well, we feel pressure to get things in order. In other words, no matter what your current
status in life, this is something that can affect you and it is completely
universal.
But does it differ from country to country (our causes
of pressure)? As it turns out, they
don't differ, not by much. According to
Sleep Review: The Sleep Journal for Sleep Specialist, money is actually the number one cause for pressure as reported by
29% of 27,000 consumers, in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,
China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico,
Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK and
USA. Sleep deprivation is the close
second. And of course different
countries, counties, or demographics have varying concerns about violent crime
rates and political unrest.
And then individually we all experience different
bouts of existential pressure. We want
to live up to an ideal or a potential that either we invented or bought into
from the advertising we are bombarded by.
It isn’t surprising then, that money is a concern world-wide since money
buys us power. The road to our dreams is
partially paved by money, only escapable if perhaps your dream is to be a monk
and meditate on the finer gains in life.
Use Your Stress as a Tool
There is a health psychologist known by the name of
Kelly McGonigal, who has made it her mission to change the narrative on what
stress can do to the body. She’s given a
Ted
talk about “making stress your friend”. She cited a study that tracked 30,000 adults
in the United States for 8 years. They
began by asking people how much stress they had experienced in the last year,
and then they’d ask them what their beliefs on stress were (whether or not they
believed it was harmful for their health).
And then finally, they used public health records to figure out who
died. Those who believed stress was
harmful to their health had a 43% increase in mortality risk, whereas those who
believed it wouldn't hurt them actually had the lowest risk of dying out of
anyone in the study. She also pointed to
research that claimed participants in a stress test performed better when they
believed that their stress would be an effective tool to help them with the
challenge.
So in other words, one way to deal with pressure is to
try and gain some optimism. Learn to be
unthreatened about your stress, especially if it is a normal response to an
event. Dealing with customers is
stressful. Dealing with relationships
can be stressful. Sometimes driving is
stressful. But it is normal to have a
stress response, and it is your body doing you a favor. The trick is to understand the stress
response as the body’s way of prepping, and to appreciate its mechanisms.
If You Can’t Channel It, Release It
Sometimes pressure can come out of nowhere and be
unnecessary or is self induced. While,
no, it’s not going to kill you, you might wish to release it to get rid of the
uncomfortable feelings it can present.
Proven methods of releasing stress are the still the ones we most often
hear about, exercise, sex, laughter, or time with loved ones.
Exercise is great because it gets you high,
literally. For a long time, endorphins
were believed to be the home-brewed opiates responsible for the feeling of
runner’s high, since elevated levels were observed in the bloodstream after
intensive jogs. What they didn’t
consider back then is that it is a rather large molecule that doesn’t cross the
blood brain barrier. So, as it turns
out, it was not the one responsible for that peaceful state of mind. What gives a person runner’s high then, you
may be wondering? Almost too
coincidentally, it’s the same stuff that can actually get you high. A 2003 study published in the
Journal of Neuroreport, took male college students running on a treadmill or
cycling a stationary bike for 50 minutes, and found the first evidence that
exercise activates the endocannabinoid system.
Isn’t that neat? You make your
own cannabinoids without ever going near a cannabis plant. So if you want to experience one of the best
natural highs nature has to offer, just go and get some exercise.
Another helpful aid, laughter, might be beneficial for
the same reasons that exercise is. It is
thought that true belly laughs can actually activate a lot of muscles in the
body. A Dr. Fry claims, “In fact, between 100 and 200 laughs a day is equivalent
to ten minutes of rowing or jogging.” Laughter is thought to do all sorts of things
like activate pain relief within the body as well as make one more socially
inclined or feel less lonely. Watching a
comedy show or spending time with a friend who makes you giggle a lot can be
the perfect way to blow off steam.
Spending the day doing a hike or being out in the open
air of nature can be a fantastic relief to pressure as well. Sometimes nature humbles us, and thus shrinks
our problems, allowing us to put things in perspective. Getting a bigger intake of oxygen can also
aid our bodies in carrying out its primary functions. Deep breathing makes us calmer partly because
it increases our intake of oxygen. So don’t break out that Xanax just yet; try
the aforementioned methods that aren’t habit-forming, at least not in a
maladaptive manner, first.
In Conclusion--It’s Actually Not Rocket Science
The good news is how simple this is. You are not alone in feeling pressure. It is absolutely a world wide
experience. It won’t kill you if you
don’t believe it will. It can help you
and be your friend in moving you towards your potential. And if you don’t want it around anyway,
there’s a handful of ways to release it or get rid of it via doing things that
we all can enjoy, such as hiking, laughing, or socializing with good
company.
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