The Benefit of Knowing How You Cope with Stress
Knowing how you best cope with stress is an important part of being self-aware, and as a result an important part of your emotional intelligence. Stress can either be motivating or demotivating depending on the coping mechanism you use to deal with it. Therefore, choosing to be oblivious to your default coping mechanism instead of taking the time to be self-aware may lead to a significant loss in time, productivity, and opportunity. On the other hand, choosing self-awareness can be a critical first step for overcoming obstacles to progress.
Some common means for coping with stress that may increase motivation include:
- Changing your goals.
- Changing your priorities.
- Taking responsibility for your situation.
- Reframing the situation to compare yourself to someone worse off than you.
- Reframing the situation as being better than the past or an alternative present.
- Focusing on the potential positive outcomes and how to achieve them.
- Focusing on the benefits of being in the situation and how to optimize those benefits.
- Seeking social support.
Some common means for coping with stress that may decrease motivation include:
- Giving up on your goals.
- Lowering your expectations for the future.
- Blaming others for your situation.
- Ruminating on how or why you are in this situation.
- Reframing the situation to compare yourself to those who are better off than you.
- Reframing the situation to compare it to things that were better in the past or an impossible better present.
- Focusing only on the potential negative outcomes.
- Focusing only on the disadvantages of being in the situation.
- Isolating oneself from support.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. However, as a starting point for self-awareness I hope you can do a self-examination to conclude if your means of coping with stress is helping or hurting you in the long run.