How Does Stress Affect Our Performance?

I know people who thrive under stress and people who sink under stress, so why do we cause so much stress within ourselves? Moreover, stress can be produced in the form of positive stressors, eustress, and negative stressors, distress. Scientists have learned that the body reacts to stress biologically, causing the “hypothalamus region of your brain to begin the stress response, sending a message to the pituitary gland, sending messages to the adrenal glands, [releasing] the stress hormone cortisol”, which results when your body feels you are in a stressful situation, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure (Stress and the Brain). Because everyone reacts differently under stress, humans need to learn how to better control stress so that they can improve performances inside and outside of school. As most people know, this week has been lacrosse tryouts and it has been extremely exciting, but also stressful balancing homework, setting time aside to relax and recover, and performing well at tryouts. Eustress has helped me in tryouts and has increased my adrenaline, giving me more energy, and motivation to work at one hundred percent in tryouts even though I felt butterflies in my stomach. Contrastly, distress can cause me to perform badly in tryouts as it lead to overthinking plays and feeding negative thoughts into my brain telling myself I am not good enough.

Finally, what can I do to reduce my stress? Some of my favorite ways to reduce stress are baking, reading, taking a bath, yoga, meditating, walking, and listening to music. For example, baking reduces stress because it is in our control as we are able to measure each ingredient and know the outcome of our dessert. Also, this may be a coincidence, but stressed backward spells dessert! What do you do to relieve stress?