Creating stress for stress free living

In my life, I’m used to experiencing things in very intense, profound ways. While listening to The Power of Now, I was in a stress free, blissful place for two weeks despite the fact that I was in college, an extremely high stress environment. Another example is when I learned to apply the mindset switch of consciously providing value and sharing in social interactions. All of my social interactions changed for the better. These shifts were minor, in terms of personal effort exerted, yet profoundly impacted me as well as those around me, and it happened nearly instantaneously. Unfortunately, it fed into a work ethic devoid of grit and resilence .

Because of this easy access to profundity, taking anything to a high level is something I am not familiar with. This has been a struggle in my spiritual, mental, emotional quest for peace. Most of the time, my life is low stress and loving. This makes it easy to be kind, loving, and patient. But when things get difficult, I often don’t have a reference point of struggle, no experience to suggest how I might be able to work through this. My solution has been to put myself into difficult positions, something suggested by ancient stoic philosophers. Most of those stressful positions come from athletic pursuits, such as distance running, Karate, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, yoga, weight lifting, and meditation. In all of these places, you can put your body and mind under extreme stress while remaining safe, thereby learning to cope in a calm manner.
During sophomore and junior year of high school, I took adult karate classes. I was often paired with higher level belts who were always bigger than me. Luckily it was a respectful dojo, so no one acted with malice, but I would still get hit hard. The instance which sticks out most clearly to me is my first belt promotion. During my belt promotion, my sensi kicked me in my stomach and I felt something like death approaching. I thought I would vomit, I forgot how to breath, and panic started to set in; but I straightened up and kept fighting. Silence overtook me and carefully a crafted instinct took over. Quite frankly I shocked myself. There was a separation between the me who I identified with and the expectation of me in the dojo. Without the support of the space and the people in it, there is no way I would have kept fighting. I can’t help but to think that moment taught me an important truth and helps me cope with the happenings of life to this day.

Founder of Kyokushin Karate, Mas Oyama

Stress is stress, your body cannot tell the difference between emotional stress, physical stress, and mental stress. To our bodies, getting attacked stimulates the same response as does missing a work deadline. Acute stress is actually good for us, as opposed to chronic stress which destroys our bodies. The only way to prepare for stress is to live through it many times. I feel that intentional and controlled exposure does an amazing job of preparing you. This way you don’t have to learn how you handle stress by exploding at your family members, you can be used to stress from facing your fears in a long meditation. Discovering yourself is one of the greatest things you can do for the world. Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is enlightenment. I know I will master something one day, it is only a matter of time.