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    Proactive Stress Management: Optimizing your position in the river of life
    Proactive Stress Management: Optimizing your position in the river of life
    Proactive Stress Management: Optimizing your position in the river of life
    Ebook63 pages42 minutes

    Proactive Stress Management: Optimizing your position in the river of life

    By Dave Chong

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    About this ebook

    One of the most famous stories shared among health educators is credited to the great medical sociologist Irving Zola (1935-1994), and it is told from the perspective of a physician frustrated by modern medical practice.

    “You know,” he said, “sometimes it feels like this. There I am standing by the shore of a swiftly flowing river and I hear the cry of a drowning man. So I jump into the river, put my arms around him, pull him to shore and apply artificial respiration. Just when he begins to breathe, there is another cry for help. So I jump into the river, reach him, pull him to shore, apply artificial respiration, and then just as he begins to breathe, another cry for help. So back in the river again, reaching, pulling, applying, breathing and then another yell. Again and again, without end, goes the sequence. You know, I am so busy jumping in, pulling them to shore, applying artificial respiration, that I have no time to see who the hell is upstream pushing them all in.”
    [McKinlay, John B. 2001. “A Case for Refocusing Upstream: The Political Economy of Illness.”]

    Far too often, stress management methods provide only short-term stress relief by masking a person’s underlying stressors, rather than providing the long-term stress relief that comes from resolving those stressors. People using the short-term approaches are confined to a downstream position in the river of life, which prevents them from attaining an optimal level of well-being, and contributes to exhaustion as they’re forced to repeatedly rescue themselves from recurring stressors.

    Where are you positioned in the swiftly flowing river of life? Are you caught downstream in the river’s currents, narrowly surviving an endless series of catastrophes from which you can’t seem to catch a break? Or are you upstream, navigating life’s journey with mastery and skill? The principle of Proactive Stress Management is one of the most powerful navigation resources available, and it will empower you to move – and stay – upstream.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDave Chong
    Release dateNov 17, 2012
    ISBN9781301603435
    Proactive Stress Management: Optimizing your position in the river of life
    Author

    Dave Chong

    * PhD - Health Promotion & Education * M.S. - Exercise & Wellness * Certifications - American College of Sports Medicine, Wilderness Medicine Institute, National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians * UpstreamLiving at Gmail.com

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      Book preview

      Proactive Stress Management - Dave Chong

      Proactive Stress Management

      Optimizing Your Position in the River of Life

      Published by Dave Chong at Smashwords

      Copyright 2012 Dave Chong

      Cover Photography by Filipe Faria

      Cover Design by Tara Okuma

      River illustration licensed from aperfectworld.org.

      All other illustrations used with permission from Microsoft (in accordance with section 8.1 of the Microsoft Services Agreement).

      DEDICATION

      To Irving Zola (1935-1994), whose river story inspired this book.

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Dave is a faculty member in health sciences, teaching courses in Stress Management, Wellness, Health Assessments, Anatomy & Physiology, Medical Terminology, and Research Methods. He holds a Ph.D. in Health Promotion & Education, a Master’s in Exercise & Wellness, and certifications from the American College of Sports Medicine, the Wilderness Medicine Institute, and the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: A True Story

      Chapter 2: The Relevance of Stress

      Chapter 3: Proactive Stress Management

      Chapter 4: The Rest of Your Life Starts Now

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      It’s easy to read scientific studies about stress and well-being. It’s not easy to see stress ravaging the lives of your students, clients, friends, and family members, along with personally experiencing those same outcomes in your own life.

      In my role as a wellness educator, stress has consistently been the single most substantial issue affecting the lives of the people with whom I work, and it affects them in every wellness dimension (i.e., physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually, occupationally, and environmentally). In fact, when people seek professional advice about changing their physical health behaviors (e.g., actions relating to alcohol, food, tobacco, physical inactivity, etc.), they often find that non-physical factors like stress are actually the driving force behind their physical behaviors. As a result, optimal stress management has both direct and indirect effects on improving a person’s quality of life.

      Beginning with the first page in Chapter 1, you’ll also soon discover that my interest in this topic isn’t simply academic. Instead, the adverse stress outcomes I experienced over 20 years ago sparked a journey that has since transformed not only my own life, but also the lives of others. It’s therefore a path I’m now grateful to have traveled, and I hope it makes your own voyage a much smoother one.

      Aloha, Dave.

      CHAPTER 1

      A TRUE STORY

      During my junior year of college, I almost dropped out of school because of some struggles I was having with the required coursework. My thought process at the time involved many different elements and was therefore quite complicated, and although I knew I was feeling stressed out about the whole thing, I didn’t truly realize how much the stress was affecting me until I woke up one morning and found that my jaw was locked almost completely shut (I could only open it about a half inch).

      I soon learned from my doctor that as I slept every night, my stress was manifesting itself in the form of bruxism (i.e., grinding of the teeth), which caused the two small discs between my jawbone and skull to dislodge, thereby locking my jaw.

      For the ensuing treatment program, I was required to wear a custom-made mouth splint constantly (24/7). I was also given a bottle of liquid topical medicine (a muscle relaxer), and I had to spray the liquid onto my face several times per day and then massage the muscles surrounding my jaw. In the meantime, of course, my nutrition habits changed dramatically, because I could barely open my mouth and the act of chewing was out of the question (ultimately,

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