Harmony and Stress

When we are stressed we have a hard time performing sensibly and adapting. Usually this feeds back a distress loop. Distress affects, how we think, what we do, how we learn, what we decide, how we feel and our motivation. Our understanding of things around us gets twisted under distress. Our identity gets all worked up as the false self kicks in.

When we move things forward using distressful strategies, not only we compromise outcomes and wellbeing. We are obviously lacking insight to choose resources wisely, to use motivation and empowerment favorably and to make the best of our reality in a harmonious way. Instead, we materialize dysergic relations in our environment leading to fear-based interactions, circumstantial power games, group thinking, moral deterioration, poor performance, acting out of necessity, despair and much lower levels of overall satisfaction.

It is wise to ponder on the stress dynamics every now and again. Are things growing freely in their own right? Are they being stressfully pushed towards some arbitrary direction? More than being about any inherently capricious destinations we might try to plan beforehand, life is about the journeys these put us through.

Picture by Arwan Sutanto