How many times have you heard stressed-denying quotes like:
”Life is too short to stress yourself with people who don’t even deserve to be an issue in your life.”
“I am too blessed to be stressed!’
So, with all of the knowledge we have about stress and the damaging affects of stress, why the heck are we still holding on to things that make our blood pressure rise? Let it go, let it go! As Erykah Badu sang in her Bag Lady song:
”Bag lady you gone hurt your back, dragging all them bags like that I guess nobody ever told you, All you must hold on to is you, is you, is you.”
A new study confirms what you many already suspect — people are more stressed-out today than they were 25 years ago.
“The data suggest there’s been an increase in stress over that time.”
-Psychologist and lead author Sheldon Cohen, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Laboratory for the Study of Stress, Immunity and Disease.
The analysis is published online in the June issue of Journal of Applied Social Psychology. In three separate studies done in 1983, 2006 and 2009, results find that women, people with lower incomes and those with less education experience the highest levels of stress. Men were more susceptible to stress during difficult financial periods. But it’s not all bad news: findings show that as you age, your stress decreases.
“Thirty-year-olds have less stress than 20-year-olds, and 40-year-olds have less stress than 30-year-olds,” says Cohen, who has studied the relationship between stress and disease for 35 years. Retirees reported the lowest levels of stress.
Its funny because all of the technology advancements that are supposed to make our lives easier are actually causing more stress.
People are also trying to do too much with too little. It’s time to scale back if we want to live long enough to enjoy the fruits of our labor.