Dr. Deepak Chopra and Dr. Rudy Tanzi believe asking people to have less stress is like asking fish to have less water. We can try to shrug off stress as normal but the body cannot.
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Being told to reduce the stress in our lives is largely falling on deaf ears. Modern life is stress. There’s no escape from the external pressures (technically known as stressors) that make everyone’s existence too fast, too exhausting, and too demanding. Asking people to have less stress is like asking fish to have less water. We can try to shrug off stress as normal because it’s so prevalent, but the body cannot. Even an experience that might seem totally positive, like winning the lottery or going on vacation can trigger the same stress hormones as negative events.
When you have an awareness that you aren’t just the victim of stress but a potential source, your behavior changes.
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Most people accept that stress is harmful, excepting highly competitive types who claim to thrive on stress. An adrenaline junkie might rush to free-climb a rock face without ropes, skydive, or wrestle an alligator with the full backing of media coverage that extols the rush of a thrill-seeking life. But medical science disagrees. The surge of stress hormones — principally adrenaline and cortisol, which carries the stress response forward — can be intercepted as a thrill. Hidden from sight is physiological reality. These hormones lead to cascade of reactions, including elevated heart rate and blood pressure that your body is meant to endure for only a brief period under acute conditions. When prolonged and repeated, the stress response starts to damage tissues and organs throughout the body.
Learn more from Super Genes: “You are the user and controller of your genes, the author of your biological story. No prospect in self-care is more exciting.”
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An old joke says, “Gray hair is inherited. You get it from your children.” The science shows that it turns both ways. We may care a great deal more about how stress will get passed on in our families than at work. But the best approach in both places is the same: become a healer of stress. Your behavior today is likely to have consequences far into the future.
When you have an awareness that you aren’t just the victim of stress but a potential source, your behavior changes. Here are some positive choices to relieve the stress around you at work, and they can be applied to relationships and family as well.
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How many of the positive behaviors do you practice?
- Asking others how they feel and listening to the answer.
- Not insisting that you get your own way.
- Always showing respect for everyone. Never belittling or scapegoating.
- Never criticizing someone in public.
- Accepting input from as many people as possible.
- Praising and appreciating other people’s work.
- Being loyal in order to win loyalty.
- Not gossiping or backbiting.
- Waiting until you are calm before addressing a situation that makes you angry.
- Giving coworkers and employees enough space to make their own decisions.
- Being open to new ideas, no matter whom they come from.
- Not favoring a small circle to the exclusion of everyone else.
- Addressing tension as it arises instead of denying it or hoping it will solve itself.
- Not being a perfectionist who can never be satisfied.
- Treating both sexes equally.
If you have already adopted most or all of the behaviors listed here, congratulations — you are already a healer of stress. Most of us, however, must make a conscious effort to change our ways, either in small or large part. None of us are being subjected to lab experiments on stress, yet in a very real way our lives are the laboratories in which we confront a host of stresses. It’s up to us to become self-aware so that we understand the part we play in a world all but overwhelmed by demands, pressures, and crises. The individual is the source of healing, a truth that never wears out with retelling.
Reprinted from SUPER GENES. Copyright © 2015 by Deepak Chopra, D.D., and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. Published by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
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Photo: Getty