Recently, my husband, Andy, suggested we cycle a route called the C2C, which involves cycling about 150 miles across the North of England over 4 days. In spite of the fact that neither of us have owned a bicycle since we were about 18 years old, we’ve committed to doing it and we’re working on getting fit enough to do the trip in June. It’s not a big deal – lots of people conquer much more impressive challenges, but it’ll certainly stretch our boundaries.
We’ve become accustomed to setting little challenges like this for ourselves, and we get a bit of a kick out of it. But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea – alot of people would say a 150 mile cycle trip across England is far too stressful to call a holiday. And yet, all over the world, people are doing all sorts of crazy (and much crazier!) challenges as part of their holiday fun. So what makes a 150 mile cycle trip fun for one person and stressful for the next person? And why’s it so important to take up these sorts of crazy little challenges?
Hans Seyle, one of the fathers of the psychology and physiology of stress, explains this distinction. He says that there are two types of stress: distress and eustress.
Distress:
Distress is what we’re talking about when we think about things that are giving us trouble in our lives and we say, “I’m so stressed.” When we’re experiencing distress we get nasty stress symptoms like stiffness, migranes, digestive problems, lowered immunity, and even major stress-related diseases like heart disease, infertility and cancer. Overall, our thinking narrows and our performance drops, so distress doesn’t feel good and it also doesn’t get us the results we want.
Eustress:
Eustress is a healthy form of stress that’s not as well known as distress. When we experience eustress, we feel strong, we get an injection of extra energy, we’re more focused and creative, our performance improves dramatically and we exceed our own beliefs about what we can do. So eustress feels good and it gets us the results we want.
So how do you flick the switch to ensure you get eustress instead of distress?
Seyle found that the only difference between eustress and distress is the story we’re telling ourselves about the future outcome. When we’re feeling that the demands of a situation are greater than the resources we have to deal with the situation, we go into “distress” and get the nasty “stress” symptoms. On the other hand, when we believe that our resources are greater than the demands of a situation, we experience eustress – and then we feel good and perform better.
What’s interesting is that you can literally train yourself to switch over into eustress and peak performance instead of distress, through practicing putting yourself in situations where your resources are challenged. I explain more about this in the Bottom-line on Susan Jeffers’ book, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” (available from 1 March), but basically Jeffers points out that there’s one core assumption that underlies ALL fears: the idea that we won’t be able to handle a particular situation that we’re fearing. While our cycle challenge will give us a boost of eustress as we cycle (with probably a few moments of distress, I’m sure), it’s also going to significantly lower our propensity towards distress for the rest of our lives.
Here’s why:
When you stay in your comfort zone and never push through any fears, you have no real evidence that you can handle challenging situations. So it’s natural then that you’d assume that you can’t handle difficult situations – you haven’t got alot of real-life evidence to the contrary. So people who don’t step out of their comfort zones very often are more likely to be afraid and become distressed when they’re faced with a challenge, which in turn makes them avoid challenges, which in turn makes them more afraid and distressed by challenges, and so the cycle goes.
Everytime that you try new things and take yourself into unfamiliar territory, you give yourself opportunity to broaden your mental, emotional and behavioural flexibility. The greater your flexibility, the more response-able, resourceful and powerful you become and you give yourself further evidence that reinforces the story “I can handle any situation, so there’s nothing to fear.” By creating new challenges for yourself on a regular basis, you’re continually reinforcing your ability to feel excited (eustress) rather than afraid (distress) when difficulties arise. Just like an practice, over time, through practicing eliciting eustress, you’ll build a natural tendency to respond to challenges with eustress instead of distress.
So we’re cycling across England. What are you doing that’s giving you the opportunity to develop real life evidence of your resourcefulness?
Photo by j.arsenault
