Every day we come face to face with stress. It could be good stress, but it can also be bad stress. We all live fast-paced lives that take us from one event to the next. Work, kids, home, dinner, activities, working out, more work. It all adds up so we need to be mindful of what we are putting on our plates.
Allostatic Load is the cumulative total of all the stuff in your life that causes physical, mental, and/or emotional stress. These are all that things that can contribute to good stress or bad stress. These are the activities we want to try to level out so we aren’t always sitting in the bad stress area. Bad stressors are things that last a long time, it’s chronic, is ongoing, is negative, depressing, and demoralizing, it leaves you worse off than you were before. We want to spend more time in Eustress, which is good stress, it pushes you out of your comfort zone, but in a good way. Good stress helps you learn, grow and get stronger. Good stressors are short-lived, infrequent, can be part of a positive life experience, helps build you up. We want to keep enough good stress going to keep us moving, but not so much that we end up burning ourselves out.
We all have our own unique Allostatic Loads, so we all need to take some inventory on what type of stress we are allowing in and how we can help ourselves find the stress sweet spot! Not too much to allow us to crash and burn, not too little to let us sit around staying exactly the same. We want to continue to challenge ourselves mentally, physically, and emotionally, but in a good way. Just like working out too little and eating too much causes stress, so does working out too much and eating too little. We need to find the right amount of both that makes us feel our best.
Every day we need to take the time to ask ourselves, what good or bad stress am I experiencing today? How can I find that sweet spot today?