Small Business Today Magazine AUG 2014 SIVER STONE EVENTS | Page 23

EDITORIALFEATURE

Stress Less

to Live a Balanced Life
By Dr. John Demartini 

W

ith the hustle and bustle and intensity of life today, it’s
almost irrational to believe that getting through a day
without some form of stress is possible. Stress affects all
seven areas of life: Spiritual, mental, vocational, financial,
family, social, and physical. So, what can we do to moderate the
immediate and long-term effects of this inevitable life-affecting
feeling of stress?
First of all, it’s important to clearly define stress. Since change
is inevitable, we can define stress as the inability to adapt to an
ever-changing environment. The source of our perceptions and
response to stress is rooted deeply in our inner ecology and biology and relates to earlier predator and prey dynamics. Either
we fear the loss of something we require for sustenance (prey)
or we feel fear of the gain of something that will interfere with or
jeopardize our survival (predator).

Each of us has a unique set of values; things that are most important and highest on our list of priorities down to things that
are lower on our list of values or priorities. Predator and prey
can be explained as becoming vulnerable and gullible; “prey” to
that which supports our highest values and skeptical and invulnerable; “predators” to that which challenges them. Our hierarchy
of values (what’s most important to least important in our lives)
literally dictates the way we perceive our world, make decisions in
it, and acts upon it which therefore governs our destinies and our
adaptability to changing environments and stress levels.
This is the nature of the predator-prey food chain within all
living ecosystems which includes our own. We maximally grow
and develop at the border of support and challenge. This has
been biologically demonstrated in every species including our
own. We have something that supports us which is the food the prey that we eat. We have something that challenges us - the
predator that keeps us on our toes. We must have a balance of
both in order to continue to grow, adapt, and maximally evolve
as a species. Therefore, we require both support and challenge in
order to adapt to our ever transforming environment. When we
have difficulties adapting, we feel stress.
Our infatuations occur when we perceive more support than
challenge from a specific source and distress occurs when we
experience the fear of loss of that source. When our values are
suppor