Monitoring Stress Levels

It is also important to learn recognise when our SAS is getting tired. I am currently learning Spanish, and I know that I can learn 50 words (using mnemonics – a method of learning which helps to maximise memory potential by ‘coding’ the information in a manner that enables our brain to store and retrieve information efficiently) before my SAS begins to seriously tire. If I continue to try to learn words after I have learned around 50, my learning curve begins to seriously decline. It is essential that we learn to recognise when our SAS is tiring and take a brake. This could be a short brake – for example walking into a different room and chatting to someone for 5 minutes. Or if we are at our desk, perhaps we might visit Facebook for a few minutes (I’m not sure what we did before Facebook existed!!!) or do anything fun – something that relaxes us. This will give the SAS time to rest and hopefully after a little while it will be back at higher capacity again, ready for application.

We need to learnt to monitor our SAS. Are we getting tired, stressed or down – then our SAS will also be depleted. Learn to take your mind off things and relax for a few minutes. If we simply continue to try to beat our SAS into submission when it is depleted we will notice the side effects. We become increasingly stressed. This may translate into an attempt to make oneself feel better by the use of a quick ‘fix’ (although we all respond to stress differently). This may be some unhealthy ‘fix’ substance such as chocolate or a cigarette or tea. If I start craving chocolate, I see this as a sign that my SAS is getting to capacity and I am trying to cope with the accompanying stress. It’s a sign that there is too much stress in my life and usually means there are issues to address. If you are attempting to give up some ‘binge’ item such as chocolate, it may be worth considering your general stress level in conjunction with your attempt to brake your addiction. If you are stressed, then I suggest you will find it far easier to brake this addiction if you learn to de-stress your life, since you will probably be using the item to combat stress. (Again, this is the way I operate, and possibly the way certain adictive personality types operate. It is repeatedly pointed out to me when I discuss this issue with others, that some people eat less when they are stressed). This means that if you try to withdraw from the item, your stress levels will be maintained at a higher level and you will no longer have moments of relief provided by the consumption of your ‘binge’ item. This is not going to help you in the process of giving up the ‘de-stressor’. However, it is worth understanding that the binge item will relieve stress only for a very short period, and that there is strong evidence to suggest that after the initial ‘hit’ that the substance offers, you will actually get more tired than before you consumed the item. So if you are using binge substances to try to combat stress, you are in an unfortunate place, because they are actually increasing your stress, as well as giving you momentary bursts of relief just after consumption!

De-stressing is possibly the best starting point before attempting to withdraw from the binge item. If you are generally very stressed, and the ‘binge’ item is being used to help cope with this stress, and the stress increases as a result of withdrawing from the binge item, this is not a good underlying foundation to be working from when attempting to reduce your intake of the binge item, since stress levels will increase as a result of withdrawal. This will not help you to maintain your abstention. The ‘addiction’ to the binge item should possibly be drawing your attention to the need to deal with your life stress levels rather than to the item itself. It is perhaps worth considering that your addiction to the ‘binge’ item is more a symptom of a stress problem rather than the root of the problem. In the same way, if you have a cold, you my blow your nose to clear it, but you know that this will not get rid of the cold since your blocked nose is simply the symptom of an underlying problem!

In order to maximise productivity and minimise life stress it is necessary to maintain a good balance between exertion of SAS resources alongside good rest and recovery time. One must learn how to ‘pamper’ and enjoy oneself in order to increase their sense of rest and vitality, thereby reloading the SAS and replenishing its working capacity, preparing it for application to further tasks. One must also learn to recognise when the SAS is tiring and then replenish it through rest and ‘pampering’ once again. It is also of great importance that one learns to de-stress by taking practical steps to address any situations that might be causing stress. When stress levels are high, this will place pressure on the SAS, so that, if the SAS is applied to a task with now weakened recourses, more stress will be created. One of the merits of learning to utilise the SAS’s maximum potential and thereby maximise productivity levels, is that one can then apply his SAS resources to tasks that might help to minimise overall stress levels, for example, by doing jobs which might have otherwise been left unfinished. Making sure that one has enough rest, down-time, ‘me-time’ and self-pampering in life and that one is not overly exerting the SAS all day, is one way to help ensure that one does not become a ‘generally stressed’ person. Not paying attention to one’s personal needs for rest, down-time, ‘me-time’ and pampering, is a sure way to become a generally stressed individual, which can end up contributing to negative outcomes, including the use of addictive substances to try to relieve the stress, as well as occasional breakdowns, or rage outbursts or numerous other symptoms that really may simply be ‘tell-tale’ markers of an underlying problem. Sometimes depressed individuals are so self-deprecating, that they believe that they do not deserve pampering, and this actually contributes to the aforementioned problems.