Coping With Stress In The 21st Century

Stress is probably one of the terms that are bandied about the most in the 21st century but people know about it the least. Though almost everyone says that they are stressed out, they cannot actually define stress. So, what’s the definition anyway? The Cambridge Dictionary (International Edition) defines stress as great worry caused by a difficult situation or something which causes this condition. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as pressure or worry resulting from mental or physical distress, difficult circumstances, etc. From these definitions, we can arrive at this – When there is some situation or circumstance in our lives that we find difficult to cope with, the resulting condition in our mind is known as stress.

When we are stressed, we find it very difficult to rationalize our circumstances. In most people, it has been observed that stress can totally exhaust their mental potential to think. Even if there is a way out of their predicament, because of the stress, they will fail to see it. This is what makes the stressful situation worse. The problem is that when you have stress playing in your mind, the one sure way to remove it is to eliminate the circumstance that has caused it. But in many people, when stress begins to play on their minds, they are quite unable to think and so they do not understand what they must do to eliminate the cause. This worsens their stress.