What to know about the positive stress movement
I remember my exact breaking point
It was the slow tease of a single raindrop directly on my forehead.
Eight miles of hiking, lugging fifty pounds in the pouring Pacific Northwest rain, and we had finally arrived at our campsite. Too wet to keep a fire going, I set-up my rental tent in pursuit of a dry moment before digging into a gourmet freeze-dried dinner.
Except the rain kept coming.
The REI tent must have seen better days. Moisture soaked through the seams and all notions of finding peace in the woods was shattered.
The rest of the trip backpacking through the Olympics continued in this vein.
I was up against a constant test to find joy through discomfort
It’s a test I ultimately lost. I felt miserable and I didn’t think twice about letting everyone on our trip know it.
I took the joylessness of the trip to be self-evident. It wasn’t. It was just a perspective — my perspective – and I was pushing this negativity upon everyone else.
We are comfort-seeking creatures by nature
For most of our evolution, the drive for warm shelter or calorie-rich food has served us well.
But life is a balance, yin and yang
Seeking for self-indulgence over survival is a threat to our own resiliency.
We face situations every day that are not as we wish them to be, be it a fight with a spouse or a long line for your favorite restaurant. It is normal to feel stress in un-comfortable situations.
But if we constantly see ourselves as the victim to a world not to our liking, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to overcome stress.
Responding to stress is muscle-memory
We can build up that “muscle” — so that our natural response does not default to prolonged jaw-clenching or chronic anxiety.
At the end of my backpacking trip, it was clear my stress muscle was weak. It not only impacted my own joy and physical health; it was impacting others.
So I began a year focused on doing things I hate
What better way to flex the stress muscle than plop myself into un-comfortable situations, like some sort of masochist, until I could break the resistance?
I dug deep. Fifteen years deep. To those restrictive middle school years being forced to run the dreaded Physical Education mile.
After being pushed into it every day for six years, I hated it. I hated running. It felt awful, hard, uncomfortable, unintuitive, unnatural.
It started slow — causal running to spend time with my partner outdoors: I hear those who exercise stay together. With a drive to dig deep, I signed up for the Portland marathon.
Twenty-six point two miles? Multiple hours pounding pavement? That was like nothing I’d ever done before. The thought was daunting.
Each week for months on end I’d run home in the summer heat after a long day’s work or get up early on a Saturday to gain miles. It was awful. At first.
Over time though my body acclimated, the stress lessened, and the pain even became… pleasure. Finally! The elusive runners high.
The line between pain and pleasure is movable
As soon as it started it seems, 26.2 miles was in the books. The first reaction from non-runners when hearing about a marathon completion is,
“I could never do that!”
And my response was always the same,
“Sure you can! Just subject yourself repeatedly.”
When you accomplish something that you thought you hated — both successfully and at your own choosing — you flip the whole notion of what constitutes a bad situation.
There are no bad situations; there is only your reaction to it
Subjecting your body to safe bout of stress can help you regain a vigor for life.
Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof talks about this at length, once calling it his mission is to “take away depression.” Dealing with depression after his wife’s suicide, leaving him a young single father, Wim Hof sought a way to strength his resolve by immersing his body in extreme, frigid environments. His methods have been shown to reduce inflammation, which is strongly linked with depression.
Exposure to stress can be good
When we use it as an opportunity to make ourselves stronger, it makes us more adaptive. Life is change, there’s no escaping it. The better we can adapt, the more fluidly we can move through it.
I can attest, ice baths suck. But they’re also great! Some days I can handle it, easy. Others, two minutes feels like eternity. Usually that’s when I’ve not practice enough. I’m not equipped to handle the stress.
Our ability to handle stress is muscle memory. It’s practice. The more you subject yourself, the more you adapt to it, the easier you can breathe through it, the more you can handle. You stop becoming a victim of life.
In many ways, fear is the same. Flow expert Steven Kotler in his new book The Art of the Impossible describes how a small bit of fear can powerfully drive motivation and immersion into the flow state. The same can be said for pushing ourselves into novel challenges.
The flow state is a powerful state of mind for accomplishing more and feeling better. Research links experiencing the flow state on a regular basis with lower levels of depression and anxiety.
Facing fear head on makes us more resilient
It means we can act when it matters most, when things are tough.
Whatever stressor, physical or emotional, we are built to oppose it, to get through it, to learn and take the fear head on. Exposure to stress can be good, if we use it as an opportunity to make ourselves stronger and adapt.
To kick-start growth, kick convenience to the curb
Humans love convenience. That’s why we’ve spent much of our communal efforts trying to make life easy.
To pipe hot water into homes. To blast the air conditioning at any public spaces even when it’s 75 degrees outside. To watch the entire history of film at the click of a button and two dollars to Amazon. It feels good to be coddled. But you will never realize your full potential that way.
To reach your full potential you must be willing to experience new things, tough things, even things you hate.
Start small. Try it today. Do something you hate.
