The World Health Organization defines health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This definition is important when it comes to understanding that stress can be good for your well-being.

There is a constant warfare like battle that takes place with our body and the environment we live in. Chiropractors call this warfare like battle for an optimal state of well-being “invasive forces vs. resistive forces.” The invasive forces would be anything on the outside trying to get in and attack our harmony or anything breaking down on the inside of us create weakness in our body armor and harmful damage occurring from a lack of normal resistance.

The body is constantly striving for protection against any threat or opportunity for breakdown to affect the overall well-being of the trillions of cells that make us up. The amount of inner intelligence or wisdom born within all of us is coded for protection. You don’t have do teach your body to protect you, it comes with the package. The innate intelligence of the body has one job, thats to keep your body alive and well against all threats and stress that break us down from either the outside-in or even the inside-out with negative foods and chemicals we feed ourselves with.

Regardless of what your current state of well-being is right now, you have two approaches toward its state tomorrow: you can choose the victor or victimhood route. Life constantly throws difficulties towards us, so whether you’re fighting a cold today or you’re trying to lose weight, you have the power to choose the route of victor or victimhood.

If you choose the victor route, you take personal responsibility for your current state. Every decision you’ve made up to this point in your current state has brought you to where you are now. If you choose victimhood, you provide excuses, point fingers, and give up your personal responsibility.

“We can show up as victims or we can show up as leaders.” —Robin Sharma

No one is perfect and we’ve all been in situations where it’s easier and more logical to point the finger the other direction. For those who are ready for a change in your quality of life, try not point the finger, but instead, take responsibility. Being responsible for our own well-being is no easy task. We are constantly faced with choices that will either build up our well-being or tear it down. 

We can start looking at stress as an opportunity to become stronger by adapting to it. We can take the victor viewpoint that Robin Sharma states and take personal responsibility for overcoming the stress in our life and create a strong survival value within our physiology. The secret to stress is the more you can adapt to the invasive forces that stress poses on our physiology, the higher your gains or survival value will become. No different than going to the gym everyday and increasing the amount of weights or “stress” you are bench pressing. The more weight you add to the dumbbells, the greater the resistant forces to that weight you will become. This process of adding muscle tissue in response to weightlifting is adaptation in the form of survival values.

If you decide to choose the victor route, it’s important to note that stress can be good for your well-being. Resistance builds strength and you can decide right now that your current stressors are there to build you into a stronger person because within each of us is a source of recuperative powers to adapt and heal to a higher quality of life.

Resistance builds strength in the gym. Similarly, obstacles in life can build a stronger you when you accept responsibility. When you go to the gym, you build strength by challenging yourself: by adding an extra rep or higher weights. You go to the gym to increase your resistance: resistance builds muscle in the gym and in your daily life. Use your daily obstacles to build strength and energy to increase your quality of life. 

Look at obstacles or challenges that you’re confronted with as an opportunity to take the stress and turn it into positive survival value. Situational stressors can be your barbells for a higher quality of life. My professional opinion is over time of wining the warlike battle of stress vs. well-being, your survival values turn into thriving values. Your gains add up in your favor to outmatch the day to day stress that would typically beat an average gain. Your gains become too much for the stress to take on. This is no longer surviving, it’s thriving. Take responsibility as the person who can make the situation better and choose a victor route towards a higher quality of life!