A few years ago, I led a women’s circle around the topic of Managing Stress. As the workshop began a woman raised her hand and confidently stated, “I see stress as a good thing, it helps me to get my work done and stop procrastinating.”
I immediately began to second guess the program I had put together – wondering if more people felt stress was a healthy way of accomplishing tasks?
Being highly sensitive, I had always seen stress as a negative response that led to anxiety, fear, exhaustion, and illness. I hated feeling stressed out and suffered tremendously (anxiety, depression, fatigue) until I started adopting healthy habits to relax my body.
We live in a society where accomplishments, money, youth/beauty and titles are valued more than simple joys found only in the present moment – a good laugh, a kind deed, a meaningful realization. This is confusing for many because we are DOING what SHOULD lead to happiness and peace but finding ourselves unhappy and depleted in the process.
In our culture, there is a big difference between outward success and inward success. On the inside, using stress and our nervous system to push ourselves forward and accomplish more leads to DISEASE + UNHAPPINESS.
Perhaps, as the women at the workshop shared, on the outside, it helped her to accomplish her tasks and then feel good about herself because she had evidence of her worthiness.
Over time, our bodies can no longer sustain the negative impact stress has on us and we get to make a choice. Do we validate our worth by DOING at the expense of our health or do we listen to our bodies and begin to validate our worth by our inner success?
Inner success is when we are in ALIGNMENT. We do what feels right within us and honor our needs. We are true to ourselves even if it looks different than others – WE ARE IN INTEGRITY.
We embrace our differences and feel safe being ourselves. We begin to learn from our past rather than beat ourselves up about mistakes and we take small steps toward healing and living a joyful life.
Outer success looks great on paper, but it is hollow. It doesn’t last nor does it lead to true safety, love, or joy. The marriage can end, the money can run out, the job title can be taken. I am not saying it is bad to accomplish things or to look good on paper.
A key realization here is that much of what we DO OUTWARDLY is in order to gain LOVE, VALIDATION AND SAFETY FROM OTHERS which means we do not cultivate it within ourselves and it is often at the expense of a healthy inner world.
Rather than use stress as motivation you can:
- Be inspired to act/do/be – Inspiration comes from our inner world while motivation comes from outside. Be curious and patient in the process – start by noticing the difference.
- Listen to your body – ask it what it needs. To protect your health and grow, let your body lead instead of your mind. If it is exhausted give it rest, if it wants a day off at the beach give it that.
- Nurture and soothe your fears – when you notice stress in your system instead of pushing through, comfort yourself. Give yourself a pep-talk, a short walk, rest, extra love before continuing your task.
I hope this is supportive and wish you well. Feel free to reach out with questions or share your story below.
