People will pay anything to live a stress-free life including me. Nobody likes to be stressed but Is it possible to live a stress-free life?
There are tons of articles written on how to avoid stress including medical research on how to live a stress-free life.
Wait!
Am I advocating for stress? Absolutely not! Stress is one of those things you can be sure life will not fail to deliver at your doorsteps. You don’t have to go looking for stress, you don’t have to give stress your address, or your phone number or your location pin but be rest assured stress will find you.
And so, Is it possible to live a stress-free life?
The short answer is NO. Any attempt to actually remove all stress from your life will be extremely stressful in itself.
Living a stress-free life is impossible as the human organism can only survive and thrive in a state of stress. Our physiology depends on emotional, mental and energetic challenges to function at its best.
A life without problems is a problem!
Stress is everywhere, even in happy moments. It is much better to aim to deal with stress in a healthy way than to pursue the unattainable goal of a life without stress.
I recently posted something on my social media, a short video about pain/suffering and someone asked a question in the comment section asking, “why does life have to be so hard?”
I quickly responded and said, “Well, life is always going to be hard, there’s no other way around it. So if you really want something you’re going to have to push through the pain to get it.”
Then the same person asked again, but seriously why does it have to be so hard? At that point, I had to pause and think about her question. Mmhh…but why does life have to be so hard? Why does life have to be so damn stressful?
Well, after pondering on her question I responded and said “hey, I understand the feeling but honestly I don’t have all the answers”
And just in case you thought I had the answer to this big question, well, I don’t but this is what I know about life — I know life is a battle. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
It doesn’t matter how tough or perfect they look on the outside. Everyone is going through something, from the CEO right now to the janitor. Life is hard and that’s a given. You have to fight and push hard every day.
The Biosphere 2
There’s a story about the biosphere 2. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, scientists constructed a research facility in Arizona called Biosphere 2. They created a completely enclosed, artificial environment Built to study the interaction between life systems in a controlled environment.
It was outfitted with representative biomes to let nature run its course: trees, rainforest, ocean, wetlands, savannah, and desert were built-in and several people lived inside for an extended time as part of the experiments.
But there was something different about the tress. Researchers found that the trees inside Biosphere 2 grew rapidly, more rapidly than they did outside the real world but they also fell over before reaching maturation.
And the million-dollar question was why are the trees falling? Everything else seems fine but the trees can’t carry their own weight as they grow. It took them quite a while to discover what the problem was.
And so, one of the most profound discoveries made by the scientists had nothing to do with a new way of farming land or a cure for some new disease but rather, the discovery had to do with the wind’s role in a tree’s life.
When plants and trees grow in the wild, the wind constantly keeps them moving. This causes stress in the wooden load-bearing structure of the tree to make it stronger and resistant.
Why were the Biosphere 2 trees such pushovers?
No wind! No Stress! No Adversity!
Though scientists had prepped Biosphere 2 to reflect nature, but wind was one part of nature they didn’t (or couldn’t) account for. One commentator stated, “the lack of wind created trees with much softer wood than that species would normally make in the wild. They grew more quickly than they did in the wild, but were harmed in the long run as a result of deficiency of stress wood.”
Are you perhaps suffering from a deficiency of stress? “wink”
Without stress wood, a tree can grow quickly, but it cannot support itself fully. It cannot withstand its normal weight and survive. In other words, the trees needed some stress in order to thrive in the long run.
If there’s no wind, like in the Biosphere 2, the trees end up being much weaker and aren’t able to survive for long.
This happens in people too. People that avoid pain and suffering at all cost without any kind of wind hitting them on a regular basis tend to become weak. They are mentally weak and emotionally weak.
Wind is necessary for creating strong trees just as adversity is necessary for creating strong and resilient human beings.
Maybe you’re going through a windy and stormy season. Take heart, keep going — you’re getting stronger. Your resilience and resolve is being hardened. Your endurance is being built. Your character is being built. You will mature, you will reach the top, and not fall over like those softy trees.
Growing trees in the biophere2 took less time but If you’re going to survive in the wild, you’ve got to have to grow in the wild — even if it takes a long time.
Don’t watch Instagram millionaires and start feeling like your life is over. Don’t compare your life to people on social media who seem to be having it easy.
Sure, those living in a bubble world might seem happier and further along than you. But stay out of the bubble. Stand the windy storm and build yourself from the ground up.
A life without storms is like Biosphere 2. It’s a nice notion to be shielded and protected but that’s not how life works.
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” ~Helen Keller
The presence of wind makes trees stronger, it is thus able to mature and not fall down due to their own weight.
Working outside your comfort zone, confronting fears, chasing your dreams, honing your craft, living with resistance — all this shows you’re made of the real stuff, the stuff they build ships and all sorts of other things that change the world.
One of the things I’ve mentioned in my book — Disrupt Yourself Or Be Disrupted is that “Your deepest life message will come out of your deepest pain and failures.”
Remember, stress is what makes a tree strong enough to grow and sustain itself. Trees need stress to grow strong because they can’t stand long without it.
When trees grow in the wild, the wind constantly keeps them moving and that makes them strong. They may flourish in a protected environment but will collapse under the first signs of stress.
The good news is that our bodies were built and designed and evolved to cope with stress.
However, stress can be reduced significantly by training yourself to see a blessing in every thing that happens to you. Any event, on close enough examination, can be seen to be partially a curse and partially a blessing.
When you lose a job, for example, experience heartbreak, or loss a business – it’s normal to worry and stress about it but by changing your mindset to see the possible benefits, stressing over it can be significantly reduced.
You can choose to look at the “loss” or situation as God giving you a chance to find something better.
So what’s Biosphere 1?
The real thing: Earth! You don’t want to be completely stress free while here on earth. It’s not even possible. Some stress is good. Stressing your bones with exercise strengthens them. Your muscles become stronger by being temporarily damaged.
Stresses of daily living keep your mind sharp. The danger is in having too much stress to the point where it affects your health and you can’t function in everyday life.
So, start aiming for a life where you consciously eliminate things that cause stress and make choices that give you peace rather than constantly trying to avoid stress.
Stop trying to figure out ways to avoid pain but rather engage with pain and learn to make choices that foster your growth.
The more you embrace stress and pain as part of life and learn how to manage it rather than avoiding it, the better off you’ll be in the long run — the deeper your roots will grow, the stronger your skills will be, and the more successful you will become.
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