Nic Haralambous on Stress

We might not have the refreshing Spring rains that await our Johannesburg fellow-CM community but in Cape Town, we sure have the most determined winter any chapter city has ever seen…it has been icy!

So the relevance of this topic couldn’t have been hotter and with Nic Haralambous as our speaker, we had just the person to raise the dopamine levels and heat it up a little on the pressure cooker topic of STRESS.

2020 has certainly been a stress-tester to most of us and not all of us have come out as PH-neutral in the turmoil of playing the waiting game in lockdown. Our bodies have taken a knock with the demands of work, relationships, financial and non-social pressures over the past few months.

Stress can be a key motivator, and a very important tool for us to survive but as Nic pointed out, it is easy to become addicted to the flip-side of that coin. And we’ve all felt it. That rush you get from being stressed for a test or a presentation, watching your savings in Bitcoin ride up and down or to meet a new person (or in person - especially in these times!). 

It is easy to constantly want that feeling and to thrive off the drama that your body experiences in those moments. It is an easy science and our brains know it. Our minds can learn (and actually physically alter themselves in the process) to create those situations within ourselves that keep feeding our internal dopamine dependency.

It begs the question - why do it? Because as human beings we are also wired to care and especially to care about what we understand success to be. Kelly McGonigal, the author of “The upside of stress” wrote “You don’t stress out about things you don’t care about, and you can’t create a meaningful life without experiencing some stress.”

This is true. We need to learn to embrace and balance it. Not avoid it.

Nic reminded us to move away from what he termed the ‘Sacrifice fallacy’. Oh yes, we have all fallen into that trap of thinking we have to give up our basic Maslow principles to manage stress and achieve wholesome, successful living. 

There is a reason that Maslow highlighted the basic physiological needs as the foundational pillars of being human and as the necessities in moving towards self-actualisation. 

Let’s challenge each other to the B2B (back to basics) of:

• Sleep as much as we need.
• Eat to feed our soul, not just fill our bodies.
• Exercise in whatever way feels comfortable, but exercise!

So that we may reminisce on the things we tried and failed, but learnt from… rather than the things we failed to learn because we were too stressed or scared to try. 

Let’s flick the switch (even when there is load shedding)

Happy Spring-in-your-step September, everybody!