Stress is NOT the problem

I just finished reading some pretty interesting statistics this morning about stress. Here they are:

• 75-80% of our ailments are either caused by stress or complicated by it.
• Almost 17 billion dollars a year is spent on loss of productivity due to stress alone.
• A survey of workers revealed that 80% said they needed help in managing stress, yet...
• Only 37% of companies offer any kind of stress management program on a regular basis
• 24% of the population say that reducing stress is their main concern for health.

I think those are very interesting statistics.

But something that I have learned in the past 12 years is that stress really isn't the problem. Stress is a natural part of life. And it's an outcome - a result - of how we live our lives, who we are choosing to be in any given moment, and how we take care of ourselves. So the real issue is, what are we doing or thinking that is causing so much stress? And what are we doing to improve that?

As a Life and Wellness Coach, I'm working to help people understand what causes stress, how to balance their inner lives, and - most importantly - how to take the focus off of stress and put it on what is truly important to them. Seems to me that if we tap into what we are most passionate about, we are less tolerant of being stressed out. Because we then realize that we need the energy we are losing to stress to live our deepest values and our highest aspirations! And that's true for individuals and companies alike.

The invitation of stress is for us to step deeper into the greatness of who we are as people. Stress is not the problem - just the messenger. Our next step is to decide what we will do with the message.