Wait a minute...some stress can be good!?

Let’s take a minute to learn more about stress. It’s March and there’s another storm predicted in this area for tomorrow. Any time there’s a storm, any time there’s life events, these events can be stressful.  And when we’re talking about stress, we’re usually talking about it as a bad thing, which it can be. In fact, many times in this office you’ll hear me or Dr. Amanda say that stress and fatigue are the two most common things that pull a spine out of alignment. And that’s absolutely true, but when we’re saying that, we’re talking about bad stress. But, can there also be good stress?
 
Typically, we think that all stress is bad stress, but I want to take a minute to talk about some stress that can be good stress. You see, without any stress, without any strain, there can be no growth. We must have a certain amount of stress in our lives in order for us to grow, to change and to evolve. I remember back when I was on a flight once coming back to the US from Thailand, we stopped by Japan, we were flying Japan Airs back to the U.S., and the pilot comes on in the middle of the flight. There was some significant turbulence and people were getting pretty stressed out. And in the most calming way that only a pilot could say, he said, “Well, turbulence is…turbulence is a normal part of life.” And then he went on to have a philosophical discussion about turbulence and it really helped. You could tell the rest of the plane, everyone breathed out an “ahh”; they let out a sigh of relief. And even though the turbulence continued, people were much more relaxed because they had put it in the proper context that this was not something out of control. No, the plane was not going to crash. This was a normal part of life.
 
And stress and strain are also normal parts of life. And if we can make ourselves healthier; if we can build up our internal resistance, make ourselves stronger, then the events that we might think could be more stressful in our life, can actually be beneficial to help us grow.
 
And also, if you think about stress or strain in the sense of like working out a muscle, you have to stress a muscle for it to get stronger. Now, if you stress it too much, you could cause injury. But the right amount of stress at the right time in the right quantity for the right amount of time and knowing when to stop can be a very beneficial thing in our lives and in our body.
 
So, just some food for thought as we’re coming into another storm. Again, it can be very stressful, but it doesn’t have to be bad. Where’s the good in it? How can these events help us to grow and to evolve and become better people overall?