Stress, Happiness, and Motivation
My experiences with chronic stress and an exploration of how it plagues modern life
Lately, I have been feeling a bit stressed. A million things to be done, ever dwindling amounts of time to do them. As a fellow human being in the twenty-first century, I'm sure you know what that can be like. My past few months have been filled with all manner of obligations and pressure, but it has ultimately led me to a deeper realisation of what really matters to me. This article is an exploration of how our modern lives make us feel chronically stressed, as well as of my personal experiences and how they led me to write this.
Stress has a tendency to creep up on you, something I have learned all too well over the past couple of years, as I keep trying to juggle around a job, studies, writing a novel, and maintaining a newsletter. There are times where you feel like you are staying on top of everything and doing your best to keep your stress under control, but somehow it still manages to catch you by surprise sometimes. The trigger can be something like a holiday, or being ill for a couple of days, or any other extended period where you can take a break from your weekly routine. All of a sudden, you think to yourself, "Wow, I knew I was a little tired, but I didn't know I was this tired."
In and of itself, stress is not necessarily bad. For instance, it helps us to act decisively in emergency situations (otherwise known as ‘fight or flight’) by suppressing non-essential bodily functions like your immune system. However, when your body remains in this fight or flight state for prolonged periods of time, this leads to inflammation, which is linked to cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, and many other afflictions.
Whatever the cause of our chronic stress may be, whether a stressful job or home life, or feelings of anxiety about ever-rising costs of living, or of loneliness, the most important thing to remember is that it is completely normal to feel stressed in what are, evolutionarily speaking, abnormal circumstances. That is because, in many ways, our society is not providing the things that we as humans need to lead healthy, fulfilling lives. From junk food that makes us overweight and diabetic, to junk values that convince us that financial success and possessions bring happiness, it's all making us sick.
One in three adults are overweight (and one in five children) and mental health issues appear to be on the rise, especially among teens and young adults. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as social contacts dwindled and screens became the most intimate partner for many of us, “global prevalence of anxiety and depression” increased by 25%. One survey found an increase in feelings of loneliness of 181%. It’s not hard to understand the reason behind these statistics. One of our essential needs was no longer being met.
The World Happiness Report identifies five of these needs as essential to happiness: "income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity." When one or more of these essential needs are not met, you will likely feel less happy and more stressed. Viewed from this perspective, stress can be seen as our body’s way of telling you that you are not meeting your needs. So instead of solving that (or coping) with a pill or other types of drugs, should we not rather address the root causes of our modern malaise?
As a small but highly relevant aside, I want to mention one of the most common causes of stress in the twenty-first century: loneliness. In 2016, about 12% of E.U. citizens felt lonely more than half of the time (in the first months of the pandemic this surged to 25%). An astonishing 18% of people are socially isolated, meaning that they "meet with friends, relatives or work colleagues (outside work) only once per month or less." In the U.S., suicide rates among 10 to 24 year olds have risen 56% between 2007 and 2017 (Interestingly, suicides have declined by 5% in 2018-2020, although they remain a leading cause of death in the U.S.). Since it is hard to define, much less measure, loneliness, there are many different statistics out there, ranging from single digit percentages to values as high as 55%. Whatever the precise numbers may be, loneliness is increasingly recognised as a problem that needs to be addressed. In 2018, the UK even appointed the first loneliness minister to address what has been called a “public health epidemic”.
That is because social isolation is extremely detrimental to your health. In fact, the mortality risk is apparently so high that it has been compared to that of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. When feeling lonely, feelings of stress inevitably follow. And when people feel stressed and lonely, many of them start taking drugs, from antidepressants to alcohol and cigarettes, and eat unhealthy food, further harming both their physical and mental health.
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So, what can we all do to lead less stressful, more healthy and fulfilling lives? Before listing a couple of concrete ways that I have come across in my own life or by researching this subject, let me first tell you a little bit more about how prolonged periods of stress affect me personally.
In the midst of all those obligations demanding my attention, there are periods where I do not feel the mental space or creativity to do what I love doing most: writing. These periods, which I have had several times over the past years, can last months at a time. As a result, I start feeling more dejected with each passing day, sapped as I am of my greatest passion. Interestingly, though, these periods have been getting shorter as time went on, as all that energy I was spending elsewhere has in recent years started to pay off, in the form of a teaching job and the accompanying financial stability. This time, however, I managed to find more time and energy without any changes in my obligations.
So what changed? The answer to that is in some ways complex, and requires me explaining more about my life and inner thoughts than would fit in this post, but in other ways it is remarkably simple. First of all, from my previous experiences in dealing with a similar slumps in productivity, I have learned to better recognise the warning signs and take the appropriate steps to free up my time and energy by re-arranging my priorities. Yet that was not what sparked the flash of creativity that resulted in this article. What finally helped transform my inner thoughts into deeper realisations, were an honest conversation about motivation and ambitions that I have had with my brother last week, and a heartfelt post by
That brings me to the first way to combat stress—as well as loneliness—that I have learned to be effective. Just having some contact with the people around you, like your local grocer or shop assistant, can already have a beneficial effect on your state of mind, by giving you a feeling of belonging to your community. People around you can also give you that extra boost of motivation that you need to focus your energy on something positive, or to finally make a long overdue change in your life.
In our modern, interconnected yet remarkably disconnected world, it is easy to forget what it is like to stand still for a few moments, to literally do nothing but let your thoughts roam freely. Yet doing exactly that can go a long way towards relieving your stress and the tension in your body. Physical activities like yoga, sports, walking, breathing exercises, and so on are a proven way to alleviate and prevent stress.
Remember to fulfil your essential needs, like the 5 prerequisites for happiness mentioned earlier: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity.
Accept your limits and figure out what the truly essential parts of life are, and make sure nothing interferes with that to the point that you are no longer engaging with what, for you, ultimately makes life worth living.
Accept that it is okay to feel unhappy. To feel stressed. Overwhelmed. Whatever the cause. In fact, when people feel like they are expected to be happy instead of sad, this leads to more frequent and more intense feelings of sadness. It is often the times during which I feel the worst that make me realise that something needs to change.
Most of all, remember, if you feel unhappy or stressed, that you are not the only one.
This post has been written on a bit of a more personal note than usual, because I felt this was of added value to the topic I wanted to talk about. And also, because I hope that it can help you think about whether you are currently feeling stressed, conscious or not. If you recognise some of the things I have mentioned in this post, or want to share your own experiences, feel free to leave a comment.