Boiling Water, Or Being Aware of Stress
Posted on July 19, 2010 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Productivity
There’s an old wives’ tale that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water he will jump out, but if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and slowly raise it to boiling the frog will allow himself to be boiled to death.
The “temperature” of our lives is our stress level, and we react the same way.
If we have a sudden onslaught of stress, where everything goes to heck in a handbasket all at once, we know we’re under stress. Our bodies react to it, and we manifest all sorts of physical and mental symptoms that we are aware of because of their suddenness.
Yet if the stress level gradually increases, we get used to it, and don’t realize how much stress we’re under until we have a breakdown of some sort. We get used to the tension in our backs, not sleeping well, or any of the other manifestations.
The moral of the story is that stress, like heat, can build gradually, and can get to alarming points without our really being aware of it. Be aware of your temperature, and take steps to lower it if it is getting to warm!
Photo by indi.ca
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Comments (3)
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Damian Castillo, GetItDone. GetItDone said: Boiling Water, Or Being Aware of Stress http://bit.ly/d1BLuA #productivity [...]
Great choice of analogy. Be it slow or fast burn, stress is something of which most should be intimately aware. The worse kind is slow burn stress. When you’ve reached the tipping point, it’s like a huge dam collapsing, which you are powerless to stop. It takes years to recover from that kind of breakdown. That’s why it’s very important for people to listen to their bodies. Physical symptoms are the tiny cracks and fissures that may lead to something disastrous. These are distress signals which we may choose to ignore or address.
[...] aim to be stressed today.” But stress can build up without us really thinking about it (see “Boiling Water, Or Being Aware of Stress”), so interrupting the heat on the pot by getting away mid-day can really [...]