Reducing the stresses in life
Take control and avoid burning out.
Kate Toholka shows us how our busy lifestyles are impacting our health, and why we need to slow down.
Stress is an inevitable part of being human. It’s our survival mechanism and in-built alarm to prepare our bodies to save ourselves in the face of threats. However, stress becomes the threat itself when it is prolonged.
I’m sure you’ve heard of all the various ailments and diseases you should expect if you experience chronic stress. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, anxiety and depression are all candidates. You could even argue that all diseases have an element of chronic stress to them. There is no doubt that having constant and prolonged stress is harmful to our health.
So, why are we so stressed all the time? Is it because we do too much and expect too much?
Western culture is all about doing everything at once. We have gadgets that make our businesses and lives run 10 times faster. We’ve become a nation of multi-tasking extraordinaires. We create technologies that do things for us. And we pay our hard-earned dollars for people to do our dreaded menial jobs. The whole concept of taking it slow and easy is for the alternative, hippy, bush-loving environmentalist. Not the ‘normal’ population. If I started a revolution, it would be a revolution against ‘busyness’. We are not meant to be running around with deadlines and people pulling us left, right and centre.
The fast-paced lifestyle has only really taken off in the last 50 or so years. Think back to our ancestors, thousands of years ago, or even a hundred years ago. Their pace of lifestyle was slow, very slow. They didn’t need to run around town or call 50 people a day. Clearly they didn’t have the technology back then, but technology has enabled us to fast forward our lifestyle at a phenomenal speed. We have the potential to do so much more in much less time! Therefore we feel like we should be doing so much more in much less time. Our bodies simply have not evolved (yet!) to withstand the constant stressors we place on ourselves.
Maybe the answer to our stress woes is to simply slow down. Take the time to be in the moment, to savour what we already have and to release unrealistic expectations of our self. It might just be enough to prevent that burnout that is rapidly approaching.
Words by: Kate Toholka.
NEXT: 5 stress management tips from Nat Kringoudis.
