Stress Mastery: The Art of Coping Gracefully

Stress Defined

What is stress? When we ask students, employees, employers, and workshop participants this question, they typically respond that it is tension, nervousness, headaches, having deadlines to meet, and so on. Basically what we hear is a list outlining the effects of stress, or specific causes of stress. The official definition of stress is anything that requires an adaptive response on the part of the organism. But what does that mean? It means that anything that requires you to respond, to make a change or an adjustment, is stressful. So when people say they want to get rid of stress, the reality is that this is impossible. That is not to say that you cannot reduce the amount of change or responsibilities you have in your life. Indeed, ...