The Ultimate Stress Blog | Stress Advice and More

Jared Heath, freelance writer, shares his personal experience of letting go of stress by doing the impossible.

Projects are due at work. Your social life has died of neglect. Your kids need help with their homework. Everyone tells you to relax, and you’ll probably spit in someone’s eye if you hear someone tell you to “calm down” one more time. You would rather climb Everest than have one more thing to do.

Prepare yourself for this next part, because I’m serious: Go find Everest and climb it. If it’s what you’d rather do, then don’t do anything else.

Ok, so you don’t happen to have a giant mountain in your backyard, but something tells me you have a gym or local rec center you could hit. Since you’d rather do the impossible than have another something going on, I might give this addendum: Cut something out of your schedule to make your next Everest possible to climb.

I could cite a bunch of research on what exercise can do for your health, but let me just reference my own experience instead. It’s a lot better to get all that blood pressure out when you’re pushing a few hundred pounds on a machine instead of blowing off all your steam at your spouse, your kids or your boss.

Let’s go back to Everest — well, your version of it, anyway. If you’re stressed out, it’s because there’s too much pressure somewhere. Nothing ever snapped that did not have undue pressure applied to it, be it a stick or your nerves. If you have exercise to look forward to, then you’re going to cut something out of your day to make room for it. I recommend starting the extraction procedure with those things that are pushing you the hardest.

The results? Your physical health will improve, yes, but you’re not reading this article just to improve your health. There’s more to life than just the way you look. Feeling good is more than physical health. When you let out the energy in the weight room, you have positive energy for your relationships at work and at home. You feel better about yourself when you have small, simple goals that you are accomplishing as you trek slowly to the top of your next proverbial peak. You may even find that you’ll have the energy to tackle more projects, but that’s not the point. The point is to eliminate whatever pushes you to your breaking point. Take on more stuff when you feel good about it.

No one is going to give you a quick fix to everything you have going on. Life can stress you out, and that’s OK. We all get that way from time to time. I’m no family counselor, and I can’t tell you if your boss really does suck or if it’s just you. But if you’d rather run ten miles in the snow than take on another project at work, then tell your boss you want to do the right job instead of a quick job. Then go buy yourself a new pair of Nikes, because you, my friend, have ten miles to run and your own Everest to climb.

Jared Heath is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in medicare advantage plans and other ways help people keep a little more money in their pockets. He passionately loves his wife, his job, and his gym membership. For more crazy things that Jared can come up with, email him at jheath.biz@gmail.com.

Stressed out? Share your methods of letting go of stress and doing the impossible in the comment form below.