To be honest, I’m surprised I haven’t specifically spoken about stress throughout my blog. As I review more insights, break them down, and try to absorb my feelings, concepts, and ideas around different elements that I have spoken of, it has become somewhat apparent that part of my search for happiness is the ability to confine stress into manageable loads or create mechanisms to avoid dealing with it altogether.

Stress is both destructive and incredibly powerful and important facet of our lives. Emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual stresses all have the capacity to work against us or for us. In moments of stress, we are forced to adapt, resolve, and problem-solve under pressure to achieve a certain outcome.

When I think about stress, ironically it becomes stressful. As I have delved more deeply into words and thoughts and how they affect us, it seems logical that all thoughts, emotions, and feelings have the power to transform into physical manifestations within our bodies, which can lead to growth or demise.

It all seems to revert back to our emotional control and our ability to slow down our thought process in order to manage the potential direction of the output that entails. If we absorb a situation under duress and fail to see it as a simple and straightforward task, we fall back into a trap, misinterpret its requirements, become stressed, and fail to achieve the desired result. This works from both sides of the fence, and if we can manage our thoughts, we can regulate the stress valve and choose to release however much we think is necessary to move in the most favourable direction without losing sight of our control.

Naturally I am a fairly easy going person, and the stresses of life, although still have the ability to test me, never really take over, because I choose not to allow it. If I’m being absorbed by stress, then I don’t feel like I am in control of my life, and will search to create mechanisms to control, and or disperse it

In order for us to succeed in the search for happiness, there must be control and balance around stress and its impact on our lives. I don't believe in completely removing it, as it can serve as an important function within our pursuit of any endeavour or response to any important task. But it’s an element of our psyche that needs to be understood in the way that it should be used as a tool, not as a reaction.

Thanks,

Dean