Just as an addict craves more to satisfy their addiction, your penchant to run against the clock and

Time and time again, we hear the warnings: stress is bad for our health. Yet for many of us, looming deadlines and an overloaded heart attack lyrics schedule seems not to paralyze us, but is a driving force that pushes us to achieve greater productivity. If you consider yourself one of those who thrive under pressure, you may be addicted to stress.
Heidi Hanna , author of Stressaholic: 5 Steps to Transform Your Relationship with Stress argues that multiple demands on our time and energy and have caused a neurochemical dependence on stress. For some of us, the exhilaration we feel when pushing against a deadline is similar to the rush an addict gets when they shoot up. "Stress is a drug," says Hanna. By activating the dopamine reward center in the brain that feeds us feel-good endorphins, stress can temporarily boost performance, explaining why some of us appear to get so much done when under the gun. Stress is only beneficial if our bodies have the resilience to manage it.
With our lifestyles becoming more and more hectic and technology encroaching into our personal lives reducing the separation between work and life, the day where Stressaholics Anonymous meetings are commonplace may not be far off. However, unlike other addictions where the stimulant is removed heart attack lyrics completely from the addict s life, we cannot simply remove stress from our lives.
Nor should we. Stress can be to our advantage heart attack lyrics , says Hanna. Executives and entrepreneurs often say the times when they experience the most personal and professional growth are when they re pushed out of their comfort zone, situations in which stress levels are high and the brain is flooded with an endorphin rush. We don t want a world without stress, because we need that stimulation for growth, says Hanna.
So, what s the all the fuss about reducing stress from our lives? While these productivity benefits of stress may have you thinking your time-crunched lifestyle is justified, Hanna says sustained over a long period of time, stress can not only debilitate our productivity but have serious health implications.
Just as an addict craves more to satisfy their addiction, your penchant to run against the clock and fill your days with multiple competing demands can quickly spiral out of control. After time, the brain develops a tolerance for stress, meaning you ll need more of it to feel the same rush. You may take on more projects than you can actually handle or wait until the ultimate minute to get something done because the adrenal system which fuels stress hormones is fatiguing, forcing you to work harder to get that same burst of cortisol and adrenaline that are released when the body is under pressure.
Chronic stress also has important health heart attack lyrics implications, causing inflammation and making the body less resilient to illness. Stress has been associated with 90% of medical visits, says Hanna. To boost our resilience and optimize the use of stress for peak performance without heart attack lyrics putting our health in jeopardy, Hanna argues we need to build frequent breaks into our daily schedules. heart attack lyrics Stress is only beneficial if our bodies have the resilience to manage it, she says.
Short mini-meditations, getting eight hours of sleep regularly, incorporating bouts of physical activity into the day and maintaining social connections heart attack lyrics are all important for building the body s internal resistance so we can maximize the benefits of stress. Everything about the human system has some sort of beat, rhythm, or pulse, says Hanna. The body is built to manage these ups and downs. Just as an athlete wouldn t work the same muscle groups day after day, allowing heart attack lyrics time in between for the muscles heart attack lyrics to tear down and build back up, the same concept applies to stress. Rests in between periods of high pressure allow inflammation heart attack lyrics to decrease, hormones to settle and us to maximize the performance benefits heart attack lyrics stress can bring.
So, next time you find yourself running against the clock on a stress high, remember to take a break, go for a walk, schedule some downtime into your calendar to read a good book, or meet up with a friend at a local coffee shop.
Lisa Evans is a freelance heart attack lyrics writer from Toronto who covers topics related heart attack lyrics to mental and physical health. She strives to help readers make small changes to their daily habits that have a profound and lasting impact on their productivity and overall job satisfaction. She s a coffee snob, magazine hoarder and amateur photographer who strikes a work-life balance through yoga and cycling. Visit her at www.lisaevans.ca.
My anti-stress pill is my bicycle commute to and from work. I take it twice a day. It takes forty-five minutes to swallow and it doesn't go down that easy, but I am stress free and immune from this disorder. I look around and see so many people infected, overweight, depressed, pretending to be motivated by the pretense of every task at work being on the front burner...I just feel so badly for all of them.
I exercise.