Chances are, there are occasionally times when you feel like your life is but a rat race amid a maze of stress-inducing situations. Perhaps even the things you do in the name of recreation and relaxation cause you to feel stressful. Consequently, you may sometimes dream of a life that’s free of stress.
Stress, of course, is a part of life, and it’s essential for growth and inseparable from the achievement process. Still, not all forms of stress are the same. The crux of the matter is learning to actively discern between good stress and bad stress.
Good stress is anything that comes as part of the process of personal growth. Just as you need to stress a muscle with exercise to make it stronger, you need to introduce some stress into your life in order to grow in just about any area. For example, beginning a new relationship is stressful; going to school or growing your career is occasionally stressful; even going climbing is frequently stressful.
These areas are all sources of good stress, however, that you must recognize as such and persevere through. In doing so, you will become stronger and more capable in all the important areas of your life. The bottom line: Never give in to good stress—embrace it!
On the other hand, bad stress is what you feel in a situation that has no real benefit or in no way relates to a high value area of your life. Bad stress, left unchecked, will accumulate to the point of making you feel unmotivated, anxious, sick, or depressed.
Once identified, you must immediately take action to eliminate bad-stress situations from your life—typically they will not go away on their own.
1. Distinguish Between Good Stress and Bad Stress.
Take a few minutes to write down all the things that have caused you stress over the last month. Think day-to-day if necessary to identify situations, activities, relationships, or anything else that makes you feel a significant level of stress.
Next, go down the list and write good stress or bad stress next to each item. Remember that good stress has a silver lining, a potential for growth, or somehow serves a high-value area of your life, whereas bad stress is a liability with no discernible upside potential.
2. Embrace Good Stress and Strive to Reduce Sources of Bad Stress
Self-awareness to differentiate between the good and bad stress empowers you to persevere through times of good stress and to eliminate causes of bad stress. When you recognize that you are feeling good stress, acknowledge that it’s your friend and, in fact, a sign that you are on the road to success. Constantly remind yourself, Good stress is good!
Conversely, view bad-stress entries as the possible enemies of your current happiness and future success. Examine each bad-stress item closely and consider what you can do to improve matters and lower stress; or use zero-based thinking (per below) to determine if you should permanently exit the situation.
3. Use Zero-Based Thinking to Eliminate Major Causes of Bad Stress
Here is a powerful thought exercise. Ask yourself this: Knowing everything that I now know, is there a project, activity, or relationship that I would not have gotten into in the first place?
Often the bad stress in your life is tied to a job, activity, or relationship that you would not choose to enter again if you could start from scratch. Zero-based thinking involves imagining what you would do if you could start all over again—and then doing it!
Granted, there are some situations in which you simply can’t take a Mulligan and start anew—perhaps you have a moral obligation to remain with some organization or relationship. However, there may be one or two stressful situations from which you can cut your losses and move on. Either way, it takes courage to honestly assess the importance of the situation, and then to make the right choice—stay and work to improve the situation, or remove yourself form the bad-stress situation and move on with your life.
4. Use Relaxation and Meditation as an Antidote to Stress
Sometimes you can lower stress—and improve how you feel—on the spot with a few minutes of relaxation or meditation. Engaging in a few minutes of progressive relaxation or The ANSWER Sequence is highly effective for lowering physical tension and reducing mental stress and anxiety. Similarly, deep breathing and mediation can go a long way toward attaining a more resourceful, lower-stress state for performing in an important situation.
5. Renew Your Commitment to Exercise, Quality Nutrition, and Adequete Sleep
Stressful times tend to compromise our exercise habits and sleep quality, while also tempting us to self-treat with alcohol and junk food. Once again, self-awareess of these undesirable responses is empowering.
Strive to make exercise your preferred "medicine" for dealing with stress--the effect of spending a couple hours in the gym (or simply going for a walk in the sunshine) can be profound. Similarly, avoiding alcohol, aiming for a more restful night of sleep, and eating more nutritious foods (including adequete protein and a twice daily Magnesium supplement) can be game-changing in terms of your energy levels, mindset, and preparedness to take on the day!
Note: This article includes excerpts from Eric Hörst's book Maximum Climbing: Mental Training for Peak Performance and Optimal Experience.
Copyright © 2025 Hörst Training LLC | All Rights Reserved.
