Do you often experience stress? Do you become anxious about the fact that you experiencing stress, which results in even more stress?
It's a spiral that most of us are all-too-familiar with.
How do you keep anxiety at bay? It is possible to be resilient and act from your true self in any situation, no matter how stressful. This transformation can occur when we learn how to respond well to stress.
Research has shown that the most salient influence on the way we handle stress are psychological factors. More specifically, the way we think.
What we believe about what we experience and feel is a crucial factor in our capacity for resilience. In other words, how we think about hardships, our abilities, and the future have a significant influence on how we cope with stress in the moment.
People who function well in the midst of psychological and physical stress hold the following three beliefs in common:
- Commitment
- Control
- Challenge
- Commitment: You can increase your resiliency by adopting the stance that what you do is important. Thus, you can remain committed to things in your life because you recognize that you do have influence. In short, you know your own power – that your life matters.
- Control: While you are not in control of your life in a cosmic sense, it is vital to understand that you can shape certain outcomes. You are not merely a passive recipient of events in your life; on the contrary, you can actively participate with God to impact how things turn out. You know your own agency.
- Challenge: You can view potentially stressful situations as a challenge to be taken on rather than as a threat that is somehow a danger to you. You are therefore not afraid of any stress you may undergo.
When we practice changing our beliefs, we can grow our resiliency. Give it a try today!
(This post is adapted from Reaching In…Reaching Out: An Introduction to Resilient Thinking from an Integrated Seminar I attended at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.)