How To Benefit From Stress

This article will open up a new idea about engaging with stress through scientific research, poetry, and psychology.

The “Biosphere 2” project was created as a research tool for scientists to study Earth’s living systems, and it allowed scientists to play with farming and innovation in a way that didn’t harm the planet. One of the most profound discoveries made by the scientists had nothing to do with a cure for some new disease or a new way of farming land. The discovery rather had to do with the wind’s role in a tree’s life. The trees inside “Biosphere 2” grew rapidly, more rapidly than they did outside the dome. They also fell over before reaching maturation. After looking at the root systems and outer layers of bark the scientists came to realize that a lack of wind in “the Biosphere 2” caused a deficiency of stress wood. Stress wood helps a tree position itself to get optimal sun absorption. It also helps trees grow more solidly. Without stress wood a tree can grow quickly, but it cannot support itself fully. It cannot withstand normal wear and tear; it can’t survive. In other words, the trees needed some stress to thrive in the long run.

Some excellent professors of the Well Being Project directed the audience’s attention to stress and anxiety and the adolescent brain. Dr. Rick Solomon encouraged others to change their idea about the bad influence of stressful situations and offered to engage with stress and learn how to make beneficial choices.

This idea of a new conversation around stress reminds brings up a poem written by Robert Frost.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel to both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted to wear it;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Many people see this poem as a stand on individualism, but it’s really about choice and sacrifice, and the consequences are worth the choice. That’s where teaching to engage with stress, to manage the consequences of choices becomes the most fulfilling road to success. Not every request, every assessment, and every activity need to be heard at the same volume. In the same vein, not every assignment students undertake must be given the same amount of effort. It is only when students fully understand that it’s fine to reject, and it’s totally fine not to do everything at full speed.

As our society prepares itself for challenges at work or with studies, we can all find ways to engage with stress.

To find out what principles were followed by the students of Victorian Boarding Schools, follow the link.

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