Under pressure or stressed?

What’s the difference between pressure and stress?  Well the Health and Safety Executive's formal definition of work-related stress used to be: "The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them at work."  Hmmm.  That clears it up then!

Think of it this way.  Think of an rubber band.  When it’s sat on a table doing nothing, all floppy and useless it’s like us with nothing to do – bored, dull and with no purpose.  But.  Pick it up and stretch it a bit, put around something (a bunch of pencils perhaps – anything) and all of a sudden it’s doing what it is supposed to.  It has purpose.  But what happens if you take that same rubber band and stretch it and stretch it and stretch it... Of course, it breaks.  That’s the moment when pressure becomes stress – that moment when the pressure of doing what we’re used to doing becomes too much and we can’t cope any more.

So what causes that moment to happen? What pushes us beyond healthy pressure, purpose and doing what we’re here for?  Well, this is where things get really interesting because that is a completely individual and personal thing.  It really is different strokes for different folks.  What motivates and excites some people, stresses others.  Deadlines, responsibility, finances.  We all have a personal and individual reaction to them.

Why do we get stressed anyway?  Well it’s the old fight or flight mechanism trying to keep us safe.  So we’re ready to go into battle or to run away.

So how do we make sure we are able to keep to the pressure side of the stretch and not get to that point of stress?  Well there are three areas of our lifestyle that are worth a quick check in... exercise, relaxation and diet. 

Are you getting enough physical exercise?  Why?  Instead of fighting with our enemies or running away from them, we need to physically burn off that stress reaction. 

Relaxation: Is your body and your mind getting enough down time?  If you’ve lots going on, you need stamina and therefore you need rest. 

Diet: now I’m no dietician but even I know that healthy eating is a no-brainer.  But are we relying on too many short term coping measures like coffee and chocolate rather than a strong foundation of healthy eating?  I believe the experts say 80% of our diet should be healthy and only 20% should be the naughty stuff!

And so remember what LORETTA LAROCHE noticed: Stressed spelled backwards is desserts.