Stress, Fun and Happiness Essay Sample

Introduction

It is a norm that people are met with some kind of challenge as we go about their everyday lives. Most people have learnt to deal with these challenges and most of the time find meaningfulness in them. However, sometimes these challenges tend to overwhelm them and end up presenting themselves as stress which reflects on our happiness. Stress management, which involves set of techniques, for instance, engaging in activities that makes an individual happy intended to help people deal with stress effectively, therefore becomes essential with the primary aim being to prevent stress from interfering with our daily responsibilities. Successful stress management occurs individuals can strike a balance between work, relationships, relaxation and fun. They have to be careful when managing stress, that is, not to overemphasise personal interest during times of stress to not forget the primary reason for stress management which is being able to deal with stressors head on (Powell & Enright, 2015).

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The following is a list of things I do for fun; they include: playing games with family and friends which provides a platform of spending spend quality time together with them and watching movies or reading books that perfectly suites my taste. In times of stress, I do the following activities; I exercise majorly by going for a run or a jog, I express my feelings by writing down them on paper, taking long walks either alone or with my pet and spending time with friends and family to take things off my head. The following list includes the things that I do to make myself happy; appreciating myself more, find something that triggers gratitude, finding positive meaning in negative events and reliving good memories, for instance, going through old photos.

A striking feature of the list listed above is that they closely interrelate. Stress relievers tend to be activities that you do for fun and activities that you do for fun are activities that tend to make you happy. Therefore, one can relieve stress by simply in engaging in that you consider fun and that makes you happy (Holman, Johnson & O'Connor, 2018). Personally, the first step I take towards managing stress is in engaging in my kind of fun activities to lift my spirits which further helps me focus on the things that make me happy, in this state (peace of mind included) taking a step to deal with the challenge causing stress becomes easier.

A potential challenge when dealing with stress is that most people, I included, are too busy with other responsibilities to practice stress relieving activities. It essentially becomes very hard to engage in activities that can relieve us from stress as they are always thought of as activities that focus on our interest in this case fun activities. Thus our responsibilities for example jobs will not be favoured by this, and we may end up being in a lot of trouble. The main reason for this is that people feel that time is not always on our side. Fun, therefore, seems to be in the way of dealing with stress as we think it will make us lag in our responsibilities, therefore, adding onto people's stresses and consequently, stress gets in the way of our enjoyment of life. In such times, individuals tend to deal with stress by focusing on things that do not remind us of our stresses, most of the times being the things that make us happy which are not necessarily fun activities, for instance, finding something positive in negative events. Notably, this shows that stress relievers may not always be fun activities and fun activities may not always be the things that make us happy (Grover et al. 2019).

Reference

Grover, S., Dua, D., Shouan, A., Nehra, R., & Avasthi, A. (2019). Perceived stress and barriers to seeking help from mental health professionals among trainee doctors at a tertiary care centre in North India. Asian journal of psychiatry, 39, 143-149

Holman, D., Johnson, S., & O'Connor, E. (2018). Stress management interventions: Improving subjective psychological well-being in the workplace. Handbook of wellbeing. Salt Lake City, UT: DEF Publishers. DOI: nobascholar. com.

Powell, T. J., & Enright, S. J. (2015). Anxiety and stress management. Routledge