In a recent media interview, I was asked, “How do you avoid stress?” My answer: “I don’t avoid it. I accept it.”
Sounds crazy, right? Isn’t stress bad? Shouldn’t we avoid it at all costs? I used to think so. I thought of stress as an unhealthy thing that I should push away from my life. I thought it was always negative and should be avoided whenever possible.
But then I realized: Trying to avoid stress is a losing battle. Life is chaotic. It’s constantly throwing us curveballs, and stress is a normal reaction to that—and that’s OK. It’s not the stress that’s inherently bad, it’s the way we deal with it.
When we resist stress, we give it the power to take us to a negative place. Our bodies tense up, our minds get muddled, and we feel powerless. So what can we do instead? Charge stress with positivity. Look at what the stress is trying to teach you. Is it showing you a situation needs to change? Is it telling you to take a close look at a relationship or job? Is it opening your eyes to something you’ve known deep down for a long time? When we listen to stress and learn from it, it can help us do amazing things.
There is also such a thing as what I call “happy stress.” This is the kind of stress that transforms in a meaningful way. In a barre3 class, our isometric holds push you to the point of fatigue—often so much that your muscles begin to shake uncontrollably. This is your body under stress. It’s tempting to break out of the hold to avoid the discomfort in your body—believe me, I know!—but we learn how to find the calm in this moment of chaos instead. We learn how to observe this stress in the body because we know it will ultimately create a positive change in our bodies. The same principle applies to any kind of stress. When we observe the stress and find the calm in the chaos instead of running away from the source, we create a positive change.
