Importance Of Managing Stress Dr.
Shriniwas Kashalikar The only way of effective stress management is to understand the nature, causes, dimensions, mechanisms, effects and principles of management of stress. Basically this involves improvement in cognition, affect and conation. In other words, this involves improvement in our views, our feelings and our actions. In my book, “STRESS, UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGEMENT, A WAY TO TOTAL WELL BEING”, I have discussed these things.
But having studied the basics required in stress management one looks forward for greater efficiency. For more effective management of stress, management of conceptual stress is essential and for that, further improvement in views, feelings and actions is essential. For this, it is imperative to study issues, which affect private as well as public life and especially those issues, which are pertinent to our fields. Please remember, without evolving views, feelings and actions with respect to issues in individual as well as social life, pertinent to your field, stress in general and conceptual stress in particular can not be managed effectively.
Unfortunately many of us try frantically to manage stress [and conceptual stress], without this understanding and as a result, create and perpetuate misery for themselves and the society. All short cuts marketed under the disguise of stress management can at times be temporarily useful but ultimately prove useless and even counterproductive in personal and social life. Now let us see why effective stress [and conceptual stress] management is essential. Every one of us has stress. Thus a student may have stress of examination or competition and a doctor may have a stress of treating a difficult disease. A farmer may have stress of drought and a mill worker may have stress of lay off. A
Prime Minister of a country may have stress of a crucial decision making such as nuclear testing, dealing with religious sentiments or flak from media etc. It has to be appreciated that just as the causes of the stress vary, the implications of the stress also vary. Thus the adverse effects of the ineffective management of stress in individual life as well social life vary. Thus the student may avoid appearing for examination, the doctor may shirk from his duty, the farmer may commit suicide and the mill worker rendered jobless may be forced into illegal underworld activities. The wrong decision of a Prime Minister may influence not only his life but also that of the generations after generations of one or more countries, in adverse ways.
This clearly illustrates that the adverse effects of stress are not restricted to one’s own body and one’s own family. The ineffective management of stress by political leaders, industrial leaders, union leaders, media leaders, religious leaders and in general people involved in decision making can adversely affect various walks of life and even the future generations directly or indirectly. This is comparable to most dangerous and rapidly spreading pandemic infectious disease. The patient suffering from such infectious disease, if does not undergo proper treatment, then he/she would harm himself/herself as well as the others. Effective management of stress [and conceptual stress] therefore, is vitally
important for one’s own well being and that of the society as well!
Dr. Shriniwas Kashalikar