What is stress?

What is stress to you?  Do you think of stress as some major event in your life or the accumulation of all the little things? The funny thing is the perception of stress is different for everyone.  When I was researching for my book “The Underdog Curse” I realized that everyone will define stress differently.  Many will have stress and think they don’t while others that think they may have stress are not as bad as the ones that think they don’t.

Also the difference in genders makes a big difference on perception of stress.  Over the last 17 years as a Chiropractor I have seen the difference big time.  When I ask men if they are under a lot of stress many of them will say no I am good.   After a few probing questions though I can uncover quite a bit of stress.

The Challenge with men sometime is that they think that being stresses is a weakness.  They also think that they have to be a basket case in order to admit that they are under stress.

I had to change my approach with men about asking the question.  I now ask them if they have a busy mind.  You see when you have a busy mind you are thinking all about the future or the past.  When our mind is always worried about what needs to be done or what did not get done that triggers the stress response.  The act of thinking can create stress, however the act of doing is not stressful because you are in the moment.

I always use the analogy, if you are in the woods and you think there is a bear there, then that is stressful.  On the other hand if you see and bear and you are in the moment dealing with the bear that is not stressful.  Once you survived the meeting with the bear that can create stress again because you imagine all the bad scenario’s that could have happened with that bear.

In the Book “The Underdog Curse” I go over how your mind is often the major culprit for triggering the stress response.  I tease my patients and coaching clients saying that as a human being we are highly evolved over the rest of the animal kingdom.  We have developed a much higher functioning brain where we can think and solve problems.  We also have the amazing ability to turn on our stress response for no good reason.

Taking an inventory of our thoughts and how we think can go a long way in decreasing our stress.  To get the rest of the story go to Amazon and order “The Underdog Curse”.

Crush the Curse

Dr Don MacDonald