What If We Live A Life Of Zero Stress?
Tags: Self, Personal Development, Self-awareness, Self Improvement, Stress

What if we can live a life without any stress? Would it be any good?

Take, for instance, one research done on students. The students are separated into three groups who reported feeling little stress, a moderate amount of stress, or lots of stress. The researchers then analyze their grades. The students who do the best with their final exams are surprising in the middle group where they experienced a moderate amount of stress.

So clearly, from the above story, some stress is good. Right?

You would be correct. Without any stress, one would not be prompted into starting any duty and fulfill any responsibilities. Stress propels us into doing something we should be doing because knowing if we don’t accomplish such a task, there would be a not too pleasant outcome ie. bad grades.

However, a high amount of stress is also bad because it caused the students to not be able to perform as well. When you’re nervous, or stressed, you may not think as clearly as you could and it clouds your heads and messed up your intuition which can be fine-tuned to be more correct than relying on logic. Even reliance on logic in times of high stress doesn’t seem to be too prudent either.

A high amount of stress simply wouldn’t do people too much good beyond getting them started with the task at hand.

Now think about a life without any stress or stressors. We all have things in our lives that may bring us a tremendous amount of discomfort and stress. At each stage of your life, you may be dealing with a different amount of stress from a range of possible stressors. It’s inevitable and I know it would be best if we could avoid it.

These stressors in life could be grades, making friends, finding a job, applying to universities, getting along with your spouse’s family, health problems, high mortgage prices, etc.

There could also be stressors you could never predict such as those pertaining to accidents. Driving can be a dangerous task and most of us do it (especially if you don’t live in the city). Driving increases our risks of accidents by a whole lot. With risks of accident, there is the underlying horrors of dealing with burnt skin, disfigurement, amputation, coma, etc. This can happen to you or anyone you love and care about.

We can’t escape the stress planned or unplanned, and there are reasons to hate it.

Don’t we all just want to return to our carefree days as children? Children who may also have little stress here and there but nothing too major. Perhaps then, what we wanted is not zero stress at all but it’s a moderate amount of stress.

As they said, everything is good in moderation. Stress is good in moderation.

Stress responses have been an evolutionary advantage. Those who weren’t stressed in the face of danger ie. a lion, would be less likely to run away and thus be killed preventing them from passing on their genes. Stress can be useful in humanity’s past and as well as now.

A life of no stress can be extremely boring. A life of seemingly no obstacles to conquer can be drab and dreadful.

A life filled with some stress brought on by adventures can be more worth living for than a life that doesn’t prompt us to feel, act, respond, cry, smile, laugh, breakdown, and recover.

Let me give you a personal example, everytime I finish my exams I got a huge sense of relief that I’m certain wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the stress that I experienced. The feeling of relief is one that is incomparable to any other feelings. Sure, I would have been doing the exact same thing any other day during the summer break — chilling on Youtube. But the feeling of chilling on Youtube after an exam is vastly different. I felt a sense of light-weightedness.

Without stress, our feelings become monotone. We won’t experience as much up and down in our moods. Life effectively would become unwelcoming.

It’s okay to not like stress. It’s totally justifiable to want to get rid of it. But somewhere inside you know life lacking it would not be a life worth living at all.

Some stress is good. There you go, I hope I just justified some of your sufferings. Without suffering, we’d effectively only be existing and not living.

What do you think? What do you think life would be like with absolutely no stress?