How Successful People Handle Stress

How Successful People Handle Stress We all know that living under stressful conditions has serious physical and emotional consequences. So why do we have so much trouble taking action to reduce our stress levels and improve our lives? Researchers at Yale University have the answer. They found that intense stress actually reduces the volume of gray matter in the areas of the brain responsible for self-control. Diminished self-control reduces your ability to cope with future stress. It also makes it harder for you to set limits and keep yourself out of stressful situations, as well as ensuring you create more stress for yourself by overreacting to challenging people and circumstances. The Yale research shows us why so many people get sucked into progressive rounds of greater and greater stress until they completely burn out (or worse). Dwindling self-control is particularly scary when you consider the same researchers found that stress affects physiological functions in the brain, contributing to chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes. And stress doesn't stop there—it leads to depression, obesity, and decreased cognitive performance. The tricky thing about stress is that it’s an absolutely necessary emotion. Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state. Research from UC Berkeley even found that the onset of stress entices the brain into growing new cells responsible for improved memory. However, this effect is only seen when stress is intermittent. When stress is prolonged, it suppresses the brain’s ability to develop new cells.