Eliminating All Stress Isn’t Necessarily the Answer

Tag: Stress ReliefBeth and Neill

I came across this blog post today and it reminded me of a story I heard at a personal growth seminar I took some time back. The story goes something like this:

“As hectic as life is, and with as much going on as we all have, we can tend to feel stressed out. So we do our best to eliminate the stress from our lives. Since that’s impossible we work towards as much relief from stress as possible.”

At this point in the story they took a piece of chalk and said,

“So we go about our lives trying to stay as calm as possible, evening out all of the highs and lows of life.”

That’s when they drew a straight line across the chalkboard.

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Then they asked, “If you were in a hospital looking at your vital signs on a monitor, what would the nurses say if they saw this straight line?”

You guessed it, a flat line means you’re dead.


If you haven’t gotten it already… the point of the story is that life has its ups and downs. And some of those ups are actually the most exciting most integrating times of our lives. And some of the downs are our best learning opportunities.

So if we’re only willing to do things where we can stay calm, then we may be missing out on some of life’s most wonderful opportunities.

And as this blog post says, short term stress can actually be healthy for you!

Short term stress is healthy

– Our bodies are designed to deal with short term stress. When we are under stress, adrenaline surges within us and our immune system is heightened. Short- term stress, such as having to give a speech, has a defined endpoint, …

With love,
Beth and Neill