Forwarded: How hard should I push myself?
A lot of us want to give our best at what we do and this desire fuels our work, activities and relationships. Even if you put “good enough” effort into your activities, you might find this article helpful (even, motivating) about how to manage stress in our daily life.
How hard should I push myself? Link to heading
I believe that in the process of pushing ourselves, we discover our mental limits, often adapt successfully to the workload. Nonetheless, the value of this question lies in the fact that we might be better off finding our personal balance between realizing our uninhibited ambitions and stretching ourselves too thin.
In the process of answering this question, we need to be absolutely honest with ourselves. It’s far easier to fool yourself with misguided motivators on either end of the spectrum - pushing ourselves too hard as an excuse to fill a deep-seated void, or procrastinating in the name of self-love.
The central premise of the article is that - pushing yourself creates stress. So the question essentially boils down to: How much is my appetite for stress?
The author dives into the possible mechanisms that manifest themselves as stress. I was very intrigued to note that our stress response could be considered a defense mechanism that is built to get us out of potentially danger. We, humans, have the ability to anticipate danger and a stress signal is the bodily response to such situations. So stress is a totally natural thing to experience in our lives. Thus, the ability to exert stress is not dangerous in and of itself. However, making a habit out of it, results in chronic stress - which is super harmful.
The most useful metaphor for thinking about stress was that of how our physical body muscles develop strength. In particular, the importance of regular workout in keeping our muscles attuned for the environment at the cost of daily physical exertion.
Inspite of how much stress you think you can take, some coping strategies could definitely help you. Here are some that I personally use/plan to use:
Have the optionality to control your stressors and dial them down.
Expose yourself to most stressors in a more predictable manner.
Create productive outlets for frustrations - e.g. exercise and journaling.
Social support to put an unmanageable stressor into perspective.