Stress has become a serious concern in today’s competitive environment. Depression, suicide, and quitting have become frequent phenomenon among people higher up the ladder. Accomplished professionals to ambitious strugglers to students, everybody is victimized by stress or pressure of performance.
We have read enough articles on what stress is, how it affects our mental & physical well-being and many ways of coming out of it.
So what do you do about it?
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Easier said than done, huh?
I have used a simple sixth standard physics formula to solve this stress problem, let me explain how.
Over the years I have realized that Stress is directly proportional to the amount of work we do unwillingly, whether in our personal or professional lives. A child is never stressed out playing in the sun; however when it comes to studies, he feels pressured. A patient feels the pressure when he is asked to take rest whereas daily employees crave for it.
Pressure = Force/ Area
I will now explain how this can be related to real life stress problem.
Pressure (P) = Stress, Force (F) = Environment acting, and Area (A) = (Individual) experiencing it.
Pressure acting is inversely proportional to the area, thus by increasing area we can reduce the pressure. What does it mean?
The PFA Principle
The solution is to increase A to (A + A1 + A2 + A3…..An)
Whenever we have something in our minds disturbing us, the moment we confide in somebody, we feel relaxed. What actually happens is that A has become A + A1.
The force acting gets uniformly distributed among A and A1.
This means to reduce pressure, increase area. Whenever one feels pressurized or stressed, immediately work upon increasing the area. Involve people, discuss, promote team work and solve.
Every problem comes in a package with a solution. Solve it as a team, don’t carry the burden alone!
Individual is “A”.
Team is “A+ A1 + A2 + A3…An”
An experience on handling stress from one of my friends, in his words:
“Having been a solopreneur for a while, I have felt stress acting in ways my corporate life seldom offered me a chance to experience. [I had no idea what panic attacks were till a few months into my endeavor!]
And, debilitating though that might have been, I had no recourse but to find solutions within myself. The luxury of having an A (area additions) or an A team to back upon wasn’t always there.
There were a few times when I could confide in others, but when they are distant from the topics under consideration, that can only help so much. To find answers within myself, I had to mine the latent layers of strength. To get there, it took me time, constant effort and much higher levels of awareness of many facets (ego, emotions, and environment) than I have known before.
But, ultimately, it has set me off on a path to keep working on enjoying the moment and knowing that the emotion of stress is but one of several things in the now and that I have the power to handle it.
There are various activities like listening to music, hitting the road, pursuing a hobby, but when work completely subsumes you, it takes some additional energy and discipline for these.
Instead, I have found regular meditation and practicing consciousness to work best for me. I suppose from a PFA perspective, I found that our internal A has considerable scope for expansion (not physically, but at a holistic level).”
Here’s the counter View to that approach, as one of my colleagues shared:
However, at times sharing aspects of life with more people backfires in many ways.
• Person really does not know you well and you share something personal. This at times leads to misguidance – as the person you share the experience with really does not know you well on an emotional level. He guides you as he would, to the situation rather than getting into your shoes and empathetically solving the matter from your viewpoint.
• Gossip Spreads: While you might have shared and confided in someone with the intention to ease the pressure. This sometime just becomes another topic of discussion amongst your friend circles in due course of time.
We then infer this as: To Confide and increase the “Area” is a good remedy provided you are sure that the person you are sharing the experience, life event or anything else in particular is someone whom you trust.
Trust not only to maintain a confidentiality of the discussion, but also a trust on knowing that the person really understands you to the deepest of being, and knows you to the core.
The stress then definitely eases. Many of us would have felt the balm of such discussions in our own lives.
We all have one life to live, let us live it on our terms and if lived right…once is good enough!
A very well written article with an innovative principle and approach. Hope many may use this principle to their advantage and be able to adopt it in their lives.
After reading this article I thought of sharing my feelings about it. Firstly, absolutely enjoyed reading this article. I really liked how the simple formula is used as a metaphor and a concept is built around it. This is very thought provoking and the examples sited are so true that I as an individual could easily relate to them. In today’s competitive environment it becomes difficult to live life in our terms, often. But let’s try and pull the situation upside down with our conviction and continuous consciousness. I’m sure the effort spent for that would be totally worthy.
Very pertinent point on Stress and how this can be mitigated by increasing the Area (A). The way to reduce and its pros and cons are also explained. At times, we are too occupied to rely on support system available to us in the form of extended circles, be it friends or family.
In this age of fierce competition, urge to be always on top and confinement to limited circle makes us prone to lot of unpleasant situations.
Thanks to Shantanu for bringing out this much required subject and ways to come out.
We human beings have never been able to survive alone, so we are called social animals. Earlier, work hours were less, joint family provided huge support too. So suicides were less. Today, we are running after growth and becoming loners with no time for unwinding. This article rightly focuses on the way we are closing ourselves within and not opening up to near and dear ones. Most of our problems don’t remain problems at all after we speak away our heart to our soulmate. Thanks Shantanu, good job.Added area definitely reduces stress, forget what people later talk behind our back, we feel light after sharing. Yudhisthir had once cursed women that they won’t be able to hide secrets, thanks to him, we women are by default stress free since that day.
Very nice & interesting article sometimes knowingly or unknowingly we share our personal things with third party which lead to misguidance is very true, but you can always share your personal things to one who gives you support & confidence where you feel relax.
This can be share to lot of people who can you use this STRESS formula.
Reading this article is in itself a a stress buster. Physics being applied to the meta-physical is probably a first, so kudos for being a trailblazer.