The value of stress is that it pushes us to achieve our goals even if we don’t have the motivation to do so. It’s one of the biggest reasons I am making $200k+ in just my late 20s today. The stress to build wealth and achieve my goals pushed me to succeed.
In college, I would be stressed all the time because there was always some big test that I thought would determine my future. Which made me over-prepare for exams as much as I can and study more than the average person. To make sure I understood the concepts.
It pushed me to make fewer mistakes on the exams. It worked out. I graduated with a 3.82 GPA. After graduation, stress gave me the motivation and push to finish and turn in my work product to the best of my ability. It’s why I got promotions after promotions which allowed me to increase my income.
The value of stress is that it pushes us to achieve more than what we are capable of. It’s a fight or flight response in our bodies which causes us to over-prepare for the challenges that come to us throughout our lives. Any time I’m presenting to my boss, I prepare as much as I can so I have fewer mistakes.
Also, the stress I get from thinking I’m going to be fired at any time gives me the motivation to save and invest as much money as I can. I put everything I had into the stock market and now have a $500k+ portfolio to show for it.
That way, if I get fired, I’ll still have financial standing.
Value of Stress: 9 Ways Stress is Helpful
Below are the 9 values of stress that we can all benefit from. Some people run away from stress. Others use it to their advantage.
1) Adrenaline Rush
Adrenaline rush is our body’s fight or flight response to external stimuli that exposes us to risk of our survival. When we feel a sense of urgency to get things done and accomplish good things, we have motivation to go after our goals and slay challenges.
The value of stress is that it gives us the adrenaline rush to finish out our tasks. It’s crunch time! We have to go, go, and go unless we get left behind. When we don’t feel a sense of urgency is when we feel OK with leaving everything as-is.
The adrenaline rush is what convinces me to keep going and put in more effort than what I already put in. There’s more that I could be doing because there’s always someone else who puts in more work than me to have what I have today.
We can use our body’s natural response to external stimuli to our advantage.
2) Value of Stress: It Increases Urgency
When we feel like we have all the time in the world, there’s no need to finish as quickly as possible. When there’s a deadline, and especially more so with a self-imposed deadline, that sense of urgency becomes real. The value of stress is that we are more urgent to finish out our tasks.
When I was looking for jobs, I applied to as many jobs as I possibly could. It didn’t matter which job I applied to, I kept applying. To land my dream role, I applied to 100+ jobs just to get one offer. The effort was all worth it in the end because I wouldn’t have any other job in the world.
I was stressed that I would end up with no income and therefore, no way to pay for my living expenses. Stress helped me realize just how important it was to find a job and I worked my buns off to get a good one. it worked out especially because it was in finance.
An industry that I tried like heck to get into. It brought me a well paying job today.
3) It Sharpens Your Mind
We put out our best work during times of stress. The value of stress is that it sharpens our creativity because when our back’s up against the wall and we work against constraints, then good things happen. We are forced to think of a solution to our problems.
We don’t have the luxury or the time to take our time to find a solution. Our mind just does it all on our own. Our conscious mind is great at thinking of solutions but our unconscious mind is even better at finding solutions.
There’s a reason why we think of our best solutions in the morning after a good night’s sleep. Our brain knows how to dig back into historical information and analyze it more appropriately. Our bodies love to put ourselves in a state of balance. When we go to bed stressed out, we wake up feeling refreshed.
it’s our bodies’ natural instinct working in our favor.
4) It Toughens You
The person who lives a stress-free life for the rest of his life didn’t do anything great with their lives. There’s not a single successful person in the world who haven’t been stressed. Maybe there was a bad economy which led them to lose their jobs.
Or maybe there was a cancer they had to battle. Life happens. Life is not filled with rainbows and unicorns. There are bad things in the world that happens. When we stress out over our problems, it means we care about them and want to solve our problems.
The value of stress is that it toughens you. Whichever challenges you overcome today, you know that you are resilient enough to overcome them. Then the next challenge seems easier. And so on. This is how we progress and move up in the stakes of life.
Remaining at the same level for the rest of our lives isn’t doing ourselves any favors.
5) Stress Teaches You to Take Things Day by Day
The value of stress is that it teaches you how to manage it. Everyone has stress at some point in their lives but some people just handle it better than others. The worst way to manage stress is to think of the end destination right away when we barely started the journey.
I found out this lesson too late in life. I thought I had to have everything figured out from day one and made choices that weren’t right at the time. Because I tried to rush to the solution to keep the feeling of stress out of my body. That’s the wrong way to look at stress.
As I took things day by day instead of thinking of the end solution, I started having better results. Stress is unavoidable. We can’t look to see who we’ll face off in the finals if we’re only starting the tournament. Even if we are the heavy favorite to be in the finals.
This is how upsets happen and where kings get dethroned. No one is guaranteed to be at the finals. We have to earn it every day.
6) It Helps You Find Solutions
When there’s a problem you care about, you want to find a solution. The value of stress is that it motivates you to find a solution because there’s a problem you want to resolve. Solutions may not come as quickly as you would like but eventually, problems are solvable.
One of my problems that I’ve been having is skincare. I always knew I was neglecting my skincare for my life, because I had such great skin without caring for it. However, I started noticing wrinkles around my face and that’s when I started to stress out about skincare.
Nowadays, I lotion and moisturize my skin often so it stays looking great for a longer period of time. The value of stress is that it helps you find solutions to problems because you recognize it as a problem to begin with. I recognized my lack of skincare was a problem.
However, I wasn’t motivated to do anything about it. Now, I am because I stress over it.
7) Stress Helps You Avoid Future Bad Situations
Pain registers our mind more than any other emotion in the world. Stress is one of the negative emotions we don’t forget. When a situation stresses us out, we do everything to avoid the situation in the future. When a new restaurant makes us anxious the first time around, we avoid it in the future.
The value of stress is that it registers in our brain what to do in the future if we face a similar situation. I was stressed out far more than anything I’ve ever experienced at my last job. After going through one of the worst bosses I ever had, I realized just how much I never want to put myself in that situation ever again.
I love my current job more than anything in the world. Even if another company offers me more money, I will not entertain them. Money is great but there’s things in life that I value far more than money. The value of stress is that it teaches you what to avoid in the future.
We learn by falling down and getting up. When stress causes us to fall down, we learn what we don’t want to do ever again for the rest of our lives.
8) It Elevates Your Career
When you already went through one bad thing, subsequent things don’t seem as bad. Because I worked with one of the worst bosses I could ever work with, I will never complain about any of my future bosses ever again. The value of stress is that it helps your career.
Many go through their careers without having horrible bosses. Therefore, when they accept a new position and find out that the new boss is horrible, then they are shocked that there’s this whole new world with bad work environments.
I know for a fact that anything that my current boss throws at me is nothing compared to what my prior boss threw at me in my prior job. The abuse that I felt was surreal and unreal. I will never complain about anything at my work because nothing just compares to what I experienced.
Stress helps elevate your career because you can withstand more abuse as time passes.
9) Value of Stress: You Learn Your Trigger Points
We truly don’t know ourselves and what we’re capable of until we’re thrown in the fire and left to figure everything out for ourselves. The value of stress is that we learn what triggers us and how to best position ourselves for the future.
In April 2023, I was stressed because I had to move, deliver a work product, and meet a social commitment made to my friend by going out of town one weekend. That was one of the most stressful weeks I ever experienced in 2023.
I learned what my trigger points were then, so I figured out how to best position myself for the future. I won’t accept as many out of town social events going forward. It’s for my mental health and peace of mind. It’s important to learn our trigger points and ourselves.
The more we know about ourselves, the better off we are.
Value of Stress: My Story
I leveraged and used stress throughout my younger days to gain and edge over my competition. At this point in my life, I currently do not want to work as hard as I can and have all this stress in my body. I currently want to work as little as I can and get paid as much as I can.
However, when I was young, I kept going without an end in sight. It was stressful staying up until midnight to study for an exam, prepare for an interview, and negotiate with companies. However, I was young and I loved every second of it because I had the energy.
It’s been a decade since I put in all that effort and it’s been worth it. I got paid back in spades because I now have $500k+ net worth to show for it in my late 20s. I leveraged and used stress to go from broke to rich and I have more room to run.
Now, it’s not about working the longest hours or outworking my competition. It’s about working the least amount of hours and getting paid the most. People who think a job has to be stressful because they get paid a lot doesn’t know a thing about money.
When I first worked, all the Senior Vice Presidents only worked 40 hours a week and got paid $250k – $450k per year. When we’re young, we use stress to our advantage and move up in the world. As we get older, we figure out how to play the game well to our advantage.
The value of stress positioned me to where I am today and it is awesome. Stress got me here.
The Value of Stress is Real
Many people run away from stress when they should be running towards stress and using it for their benefit. The value of stress is not nothing. Only the ones who give in to pressure and crack are the ones who don’t recognize how valuable stress really is.
The best of the best has a tough mental game to manage their stress levels in their body. When we figure out how to use stress to our advantage, that’s when the real fun happens. In life, there’s many things we can get stressed out about. Relationships, money, and our career are big ones.
The more things we get stressed out by, the more selective we can be on which things to be stressed out about. We figure out many things that we were stressed out about weren’t worth anything to stress out about. It’s not the end of the world.
I used stress out about losing my USB which held files and data that I needed for my business. It was the tiniest things that would stress me out. However, after going through life, I realize that that’s one of the least important things I should get stressed out about.
The value of stress is that you recognize what things are most important to you in life and worth stressing over. The big 3 of family, health, and money are worth stressing out over. Outside of it, there really isn’t anything worth stressing over.
Stress is valuable in our lives that we can easily turn into a positive.
Value of Stress: 9 Benefits Shortlist
- Adrenaline rush
- Value of stress: it increases urgency
- It sharpens your mind
- It toughens you
- Stress teaches you to take things day by day
- It helps you find solutions
- Stress helps you avoid future bad situations
- It elevates your career
- Value of stress: you learn your trigger points
