The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

by Brian King

she finds some way to redirect their thoughts by changing the subject to something positive.

The problem many of us have is that once we start worrying, those thoughts consume us and we just keep fueling the fire with more. But, if we have enough awareness to realize that we are heading down that path, we can consciously interrupt the flow by introducing an alternate route.

find that driving helps me calm down and gather my thoughts.

Learning to keep our brain active can help us avoid excessive worrying. It is hard to stop worrying.

Some people, myself included, daydream or do something creative. When my mind wanders, I sometimes come up with jokes.

have been known to spontaneously write poetry or make up song lyrics, not that any of those are ever any good (Sarah can attest to that), but these are some of the activities that give my brain something to do when it’s bored.

On paper she was perfectly healthy. However, at the time she had been having some general pain issues, including her joints and in one shoulder. She was also suffering from frequent migraines.

Realizing that the stress was affecting her health, Sarah put in her notice immediately. To help survive her remaining time, she started practicing breathing exercises and power poses at the start of her shift, and made a point to leave the building to take a walk at lunch. After work hours, she danced tango a lot more than she had been. At home, she spent more time outside on her porch, writing, and working in her garden. Finally, after her last day on the job, she starting working a job much closer to home—literally two minutes from home—and also started her own business. Her symptoms went away. Similarly, I don’t remember exactly when my left eye started twitching, it just appeared and gradually got worse and worse. Like Sarah’s health issues, it happened during a particularly tough time in my life.

Prolonged exposure to stress can have a negative impact on our physical health and general well-being. Also, stress can affect individuals differently. Sarah suffered bodily pain and headaches from stress; I experienced involuntary muscle spasms in my eyelids (and probably some additional symptoms I was too stressed to notice).

stress is our brain’s reaction to a percieved threat. Why would our response to threat cause us pain and other problems?

This is a network of nerves that connect the spinal cord to many bodily organs and when activated, it is responsible for most of the physiological changes that occur. Our eyes dilate, our heart rate increases. Stress can cause us to perspire or cease digestion, and can inhibit erections in males. It makes us sweaty, bloated, and limp.

This hormone travels through the arteries down to the adrenal glands and tells them to start cranking out cortisol because something nasty is about to hit the fan. Like adrenaline, cortisol also increases our blood sugar and has a lot of additional effects on the body.

They serve to increase our energy and make our body more efficient, two things that may prove to be quite helpful if we are being attacked by a bear. We are mobilized for some form of action, and that action is going to be fight, flight, or freeze.

is easy to understand freezing in the bear attack scenario. A lot of people will freeze up when overcome with fear.

Ever have so much to do that you can’t seem to get out of bed? I’ve been there. I will admit that freezing probably does not require an increase in energy so we are safe usually just focusing on fight vs. flight, but it is interesting.

stress works toward our advantage during these moments. However, you can imagine that maintaining a high level of blood sugar for an extended period of time can have a negative impact on our health. Similarly, long-term elevation of our heart rate can also cause complications. Unfortunately, most of the stress we experience is not due to actual danger, but perceived threats that have a tendency to linger around.

Prolonged exposure to stress can, and does, take its toll.

If our body is under attack, then it needs all available resources to survive that attack. That means cutting off any irrelevant systems.

Prolonged exposure to stress can contribute to a wide variety of physical illnesses.

Stress contributes to a whole lot of physical conditions that we suffer, not just high blood pressure and diabetes. This is why long-term exposure to stress can make people take longer to recover from illness or heal from wounds. This is why we sometimes have stomach cramps or get nauseous. And this is why we may sometimes experience migraine headaches, bodily pain, or twitchy eyes.

The candy, though, we walked by quickly. We are handing out bitcoins to the trick-or-treaters. Let’s see if that joke is still relevant by the time this book is published.

Hunger is a physical state that can influence our emotions. Hunger and stress are very closely related. I would even suggest that we could think of hunger as a type of stress.

we feel emotions because of our brain’s interpretation of our physiological state.

On some level, the brain is putting the information together that 1) there is a bear charging toward me; and 2) my heart rate is elevated (among other things), therefore I must be afraid. And just like that I am overcome with the emotion of fear.

Emotions influence behavior, specifically by helping us react in a manner that is appropriate for the moment.

It would be the last selfie you ever took. It seems obvious to us, but without the emotion of fear, your brain might just wander into some inappropriate territory like that. You want your brain to be fully focused on surviving that bear encounter.

The point that I am making is that fear, anger, and sadness are all negative emotions and can all be caused by stress. Emotions help restrict the

One of the most difficult symptoms of depression isn’t feeling sad, it is feeling unmotivated. Anxiety has a similar impact on our behavior.

If we interpret our physiology as the emotion of fear, we increase the likelihood we will attempt to flee or escape. If we interpret our physiology as anger, we increase our chances of attempting to fight. Finally, if we interpret our physiology as sadness, we may be more likely to freeze or do nothing.

Stress influences our emotions, and in turn our response to stress is influenced by our emotions.

remember that the function of all stress, good or bad, is to help us overcome or escape threat. As far as I am aware, all stress has the same effect on the body. It increases our energy, elevates our heart rate, and pumps the hormones adrenaline and cortisol through our veins.

Consider that whenever we activate our stress response, functional or not, we are inhibiting our immune system and preventing our body from being able to heal.

In my opinion, stress that serves a purpose, whether it is surviving a bear or meeting a deadline, is a good use of stress.

Don’t get stressed over the piddly, inconsequential events that seem to plague us on a regular basis. In other words, only get stressed when you are faced with a “bear.”

Our stress response should be engaged only when it can help us.

Only you can decide what is worth stressing over.

not everything is worth it. If you struggle with stress and are interested in reducing it, then keep reading. 13 I recently found out that although

“chocohol” and “-aholic” is not a suffix. You can’t just add that to some noun and pretend like it makes sense. “But Brian, what about me? I’m a shopaholic!” No, you just really like shopping. “But I’m a workaholic!” No, you just really hate your family.

I don’t like using those terms because I don’t think they are fair to alcoholics. It just isn’t a comparable experience. My struggle with chocolate is no way as severe as an alcoholic’s struggle with alcohol. I have never once woken up in a stranger’s bed because they had Hershey’s .

Have you ever noticed that stress has a tendency to bring out our so-called “bad habits”? Whatever behavior you are actively trying to suppress or change, your inclination to do so seems to materialize immediately during a period of stress.

This means that when we are in a stressed state and navigating through the world, any time we encounter an opportunity to do something our brain prefers, we are more likely to do it.

Not only can stress negatively affect our health, it can also lead to unhealthy behaviors.

If I had lived life differently and trained my brain to really enjoy jogging, then under stress I would be more likely to go for a jog. Too bad I never learned to like jogging.

Was I stressed? I did not feel stressed—but sometimes, especially in long-term situations, we adapt, and the stressed state begins to feel normal.

“neuroplasticity.” It refers to the fact that our brains are capable of structurally changing in order to keep up with the demands of our lives.

our brain has the capacity to change. This is significant because for the longest time, we thought it didn’t.

The nice thing about neuroplasticity research is that it shows that whatever behavior you wish to change about yourself, you have the capacity to do so. This is why therapy works.

just because we can change, doesn’t mean we will change.

In a previous section I discussed how my brain loves chocolate so much that I sometimes order cookies without thinking about it, and how it is too bad my brain never learned to like jogging. Guess how many times I have gone jogging since writing that sentence? If you guessed anything above zero you are incredibly optimistic, and I thank you, but unfortunately you are wrong. ...

We are notoriously inept when it comes to changing our behavior.