Stop Stressin'

I’m writing this to you from the Palm Beach airport. I’m very early for my flight home from a seminar I attended over the weekend.

Why am I very early? Because I’m a crazy person who absolutely has to arrive at the airport early. Not just a few minutes early, but very early.

I didn’t know how long the cab ride would take because when I took a cab from the airport to my hotel it was midnight. Not much traffic at midnight.

I also didn’t know how long it would take me to get through security. That’s always my biggest worry. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m worried that I’ll be one of the lucky “random” few who get taken aside and searched…and not just wanded over and patted down, but taken behind closed doors and searched. I think I’ve seen one too many movies.

But all my worries seemed to be totally unfounded because my cab ride over was fast. Really fast. I think my cab driver averaged about 80 miles/hour and that may be a conservative estimate. Plus I don’t think he slowed down too much on the curves because I was getting tossed around quite a bit…and I was wearing my seat belt.

Then when I got to the security area I noticed there were only two people in line ahead of me and nobody behind me. And no I didn’t get searched…in any way. I actually schmoozed with the security people talking about Nebraska. Who thought anybody would want to know anything about Nebraska? Apparently I’m a curiosity to them.

But anyway, this all brings me to the point about stress. Why was I so stressed out about this? All I could really control was what time I left my hotel. Other than that everything else was out of my control. I had no control over traffic. I had no control over the amount of people in the airport, let alone the people wanting to get through security. So I really should have only stressed over what time I left the hotel…and that shouldn’t have been a very big stressor. But it was, and I am working on fixing that.

Stress is a bad thing for your mind and body. It’s bad for you physically and emotionally. You can’t have one without the other. If you are emotionally stressed, you will be physically stressed and vice versa. Think about the last time you were very stressed out emotionally about something. It could have been your kid screaming all day, or some project at work or even a fight with a spouse. You didn’t really expend any physical energy per se like if you were a construction worker or anything, but I’m willing to bet that by the end of the day you were totally drained emotionally AND physically. You felt as though you didn’t have any energy left whatsoever.

That’s because our bodies have the same reactions when it comes to stress, be it physical or emotional. That reaction is “fight or flight”. Your body instinctively reacts to a stressor by preparing your body to either fight the stressor or runaway from it. It sounds simplistic and when it boils down to it, it really is that simple..

When faced with some sort of stressor, your body reacts by flooding your system with the hormone adrenaline. Your body also releases a bunch of free fatty acids into your blood stream in order to give you a quick boost of energy to either fight the stressor or run.

I’m willing to bet that most of your stressors really don’t lead to hand-to-hand combat or a foot race, or maybe they do. I don’t know what you do on a Friday night for fun. But, for the rest of you, that stress reaction really doesn’t give you any benefit, rather it hurts you.

Over time the constant stress reaction can lead to an increase in inflammation which can lead to high blood pressure, and ultimately a heart attack or stroke.

Not only that, but the really bad thing it does is make you store more belly fat. I hope you caught the humor in the last sentence. I’m not really considering a little bit more belly fat something worse than a heart attack.

It leads to more belly fat because all of those free fatty acids that were shot into your bloodstream along with the adrenaline have to be stored somewhere since they weren’t used for energy. The easiest place for your body to store those fatty acids are along your abdomen in your fat cells. Sounds great, doesn’t it.

I would think that reason alone would help me to figure out some ways to beat stress before it happens and not after it. I’m working on it. I’ m working on getting it through my thick skull that I shouldn’t worry about the things that are out of my control.

For instance. As of this sentence I am now in the airplane somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. The pilot is talking about some gibberish in that stereotypical pilot voice – you know the one. Very low with the microphone jammed into his mouth so that you can hardly hear him and hear his breathing much more audibly, kind of like Darth Vader. I’ve always wondered what these guys actually sound like when they’re not on the intercom. I bet they have high pitched voices.

Anyway, back to how I’m beating stress before it happens. I personally would rather the pilot fly the plane rather than talk to us about some gibberish, but there’s nothing I can do about it so I’m trying not to worry about it. I suppose if I wanted to I could get up and go to the cockpit, knock on the door and tell him to just fly the darn plane, but in this day and age that wouldn’t go over too well. So I take a deep breath and go on typing.

How do you beat your stress? Do you do anything? Do you just let it stew until you BLOW UP? Do you internalize it? Do you drink? Do you eat? Those are all bad reactions to stress and will lead to more problems. They’ll lead to more body fat being stored if you are an emotional eater or drinker. They’ll lead to loss of friendships and maybe even a marriage or job.

You need to figure out what works best for you to beat stress in a healthy manner. Find a hobby. Get a massage once a week or every couple of weeks. It might sound expensive, but when you think about how valuable your health is and how expensive prescriptions and doctor visits can be is spending 50 extra bucks on yourself really that big of a deal? I think not.

The point is to find something to do before stress gets to you. Before you find yourself in a doctor’s office telling him your stomach always hurts or that you keep getting these splitting headaches. Or before you have a never-ending prescription of blood pressure medication or an extra 50 pounds sitting on your gut.

Or, if you already find yourself in that position, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. As long as you’re breathing you can find some way to beat stress. Just figure it out and do it.

That and always remember that you can’t control what other people do, you can only control what you do and your reaction to what other people do.

Ed Scow