Truth and Stress

 Welcome back to another blog post! This week is going be prioritizing truth and entertaining true thoughts and also about stress within the family. I hope that there is something that is a helpful takeaway for you and that you are able to learn something about the things I studied and learned about this week! 

To start off, I want to talk about our brains and a little bit about how they work. In our frontal lobes, that is where we use intellect, logic, and problem-solving. Our limbic system is more emotionally oriented, and it is where our "autopilot" mode resides. As we go down, our brain stem is what handles metabolic responses such as heart rate, breathing, blood pressure etc. Why is this relevant? Well, when we sense a perception of danger, our limbic system is what takes over. We turn to autopilot and tend to think more emotionally. Anxiety and depression are two things that we hear a lot about today and are very common now. Anxiety is actually a natural, normal, and even healthy response to the perception of danger. It works well for physical danger, but not so much for perceived emotional danger. Depression is when someone feels like there is no escape from the perceived danger and when they choose to dwell on and entertain those thoughts. While this is in no way meant to invalidate either, a lot of it is based on our own perceptions and choosing to entertain a thought that is not true. It is not events that cause our emotions, it is our thoughts about the events that do. We hear the phrase to "think positive" a lot these days. This is not necessarily the best approach though. We could be thinking "positive thoughts" but they may be untrue. That is not going to help us. It is actually more important to entertain truth rather than positive thoughts. Our brains function in the way that they were designed to and it is so important for us to take care of ourselves and our thoughts. It is important to only entertain true thoughts and feed our brains truth and hope. 

To switch gears slightly, I want to talk about stress. Whether individually or as a family, we can all think of times that we experienced stress. While we may not enjoy or appreciate stress in the moment, it actually brings us so many great blessings such as growth, learning experiences, and also joy. Yes that is correct, stress can bring joy! Stress is necessary in life. Our whole purpose in coming to this earth was to gain experience, learn, grow, and become better. None of that would be possible if we didn't take reasonable risks in life and avoided stress at all costs. Doing the minimal stuff in life and putting in minimal effort will not make us happy. I think we find that we are happiest when we are learning and growing. If we were to look at a learning curve in life, when couples are first married, starting to have kids and build a life, that is considered a "high stress" time with lots of learning and growth. But, I think that many would say it was some of the happiest years together. It is stressful times that help bring the family closer and strengthen relationships. 

Some of the blessings that can come from stressful times can include (but are not limited to): seeing it as an adventure, being able to ask yourself what can I learn from this, learning that you aren't really lost, having simpler times, and making memories. Living a low stress life sounds so nice to most of us, but in reality it is not what brings us joy. When we see ourselves through hard times we learn to be grateful for the good times and we are able to having learning experiences that help us grow. We can find happiness in stressful times. Learning how to cooperate in stressful times brings you and your spouse or you and your family closer and there are so many blessings available to us on the other side of it when we see those times through. I know that we can find joy when we entertain true thoughts and when we see stress as learning opportunities to grow and strengthen our relationships and hope we can all find ways to do that. Until next time! 

-Olivia