By Dr. John Demartini
With the hustle and bustle and intensity of life today, it’s almost irrational to believe that getting through a day without some form of stress is possible. Stress affects all seven areas of life: Spiritual, mental, vocational, financial, family, social, and physical. So, what can we do to moderate the immediate and long-term effects of this inevitable life-affecting feeling of stress?
First of all, it’s important to clearly define stress. Since change is inevitable, we can define stress as the inability to adapt to an ever-changing environment. The source of our perceptions and response to stress is rooted deeply in our inner ecology and biology and relates to earlier predator and prey dynamics. Either we
fear the loss of something we require for sustenance (prey) or we feel fear of the gain of something that will interfere with or jeopardize our survival (predator).
Each of us has a unique set of values; things that are most important and highest on our list of priorities down to things that are lower on our list of values or priorities. Predator and prey can be explained as becoming vulnerable and gullible; “prey” to that which supports our highest values and skeptical and invulnerable; “predators” to that which challenges them. Our hierarchy of values (what’s most important to least important in our lives) literally dictates the way we perceive our world, make decisions in it, and acts upon it which therefore
governs our destinies and our adaptability to changing environments and stress levels.
This is the nature of the predator-prey food chain within all living ecosystems which includes our own. We maximally grow and develop at the border of support and challenge. This has been biologically demonstrated in every species including our own. We have something that supports us which is the food – the prey that we eat. We have something that challenges us – the predator that keeps us on our toes. We must have a balance of both in order to continue to grow, adapt, and maximally evolve as a species. Therefore, we require both support and challenge in order to adapt to our ever transforming environment. When we have difficulties adapting, we feel stress.
Our infatuations occur when we perceive more support than challenge from a specific source and distress occurs when we experience the fear of loss of that source. When our values are supported, our dopamine and oxytocin levels are elevated in our brains. Our infatuations are actually forms of addiction to these elevated brain chemicals. Conversely, our resentment occurs when we perceive more challenge than support and the subsequent distress is a fear of the gain of the source of resentment.
Both our infatuations and resentments take up space and time in our minds which distract and cloud our thinking. It’s imperative to neutralize the intensity of these in order to gain a balanced and poised state of mind and being. The stronger our infatuations and/or resentments, the harder it is for us to adapt and the more chaotic our minds become.
In Buddhism, these two poles were called attachments, but they can alternatively be termed likes and dislikes. The stronger these attachments are, the more distressed our lives become. Knowing how to calm down those attractive and repulsive emotions can reduce their effects. Stress is actually a feedback mechanism to help us to be more authentic, productive, and inspired or more balanced or poised with our perceptions.
Infatuations and/or resentments can occur in any of the seven areas of our lives and can be connected to anything that is perceived as offering more challenge than support or more support than challenge including business deals, relationships, family situations, and fantasies of anything that is unrealistic.
In addition, a valuable exercise is to write down at the end of each day what we learned, what we accomplished, and what we have experienced that we can be grateful for. The more gratitude we have in our hearts, the more events we will be given to be grateful for.
We all deserve to have balance and this can be achieved quite easily by asking quality questions and not allowing our emotions and misperceptions to cloud our minds and unnecessarily distress our lives.
In addition to being an internationally published author, Dr. John Demartini is an educator, business consultant, and a human behavior specialist. Contact Dr. Demartini by email at info@DrDemartini.co.za or visit his website at www.DrDemartini.com. To download a free Value Determination Process Workbook, please visit www.DrDemartini.com/pm_determine_your_values.
