Project Happiness Articles — stress

When I’d encounter myself in high-stress situations, I would engage in the following 5-minute exercise, which is extremely efficient if you feel a lot of nervousness and you need to be quickly calmed down (i.e: when looking for a job, before an interview, before a presentation, before asking for a raise). You can do it wherever and whenever you want.

Many of us do not learn enough tools when growing up to manage stress. Unless we take the initiative to learn alternative coping strategies, we respond to stress with the same patterns we have learned as children. Ten years ago as a pre-med college student, I was so stressed out that I wanted to drop out of college. I believed that I had to be perfect in order to be successful. I feared failure. I knew I needed to make a radical shift, so I started to see a mind-body therapist and adopt a meditation and yoga practice. These practices provided me with some starting tools to retrain my brain to handle stressors with resilience. 

Stress is a faithful friend. It doesn’t discriminate and it will never leave you. Its regular, intense presence will weigh down on you, instigate early onset aging, damage your immune system and lead to mental fragility. At the very heart of your responsiveness to stress lies the hormone Cortisol, which is simultaneously essential for self-preservation and the bane of your existence. But why is everyone so riled up about a meager hormone?