The secret of stress: Use it don’t lose it

It’s tempting to ask your doctor for a prescription when you feel depressed or stressed or under pressure.

After all, billions of dollars’ worth of advertisements have told you this is exactly what you should do. “Talk to your doctor.”

But here’s something interesting that might change your mind.

It’s from Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twersky who has a bit of a different way of thinking about stress that might help you. He says:

“There’s something I want to tell you about stress and how we have to look at stress.

I think it’s an important thing because people tell me it’s the one thing they remember from my lectures.

I was sitting in a dentist’s office and I looked at an article that said ‘How Do Lobsters Grow?’ I was interested in it … and it points out that a lobster is a soft mushy animal that lives inside of a rigid shell.

That rigid shell does not expand. Well, how can a lobster grow? As the lobster grows that shell becomes very confining. The lobster feels itself under pressure and very uncomfortable. So it goes under a rock formation to protect itself from predatory fish, casts off the shell and produces a brand new one.

Eventually that shell becomes very uncomfortable, it goes under a rock formation, and so on. The lobster repeats this numerous times.

The stimulus for the lobster to be able to grow is that it feels uncomfortable.

If lobsters had doctors, they would never grow! Because as soon as the lobster feels uncomfortable, goes to the doctor, gets a prescription, feels fine, never gets out of its shell.

So I think we have to realize that the times of stress are also times that are signals for growth. And if we use adversity properly, we can grow through adversity.”

In other words, it’s not useful to just chase away the stress and adversity. Instead, use it as a signal that you are changing, and to allow that change and grow from it instead of going to the doctor and getting a drug that will suppress your natural signals to grow stronger, better and healthier.