Stress is good
Years ago, I stumbled across a TED Talk called How to Make Stress Your Friend by Kelly McGonigal, and I watched it having no idea it would completely transform the way I handle stress—and that’s a big deal for anyone doing Muay Thai. This talk is just under 15 minutes, and I encourage everyone reading this to watch it despite the fact that I’m going to cover the highlights here. I watch it at least once a year, before every (planned) stressful life event, and I watched it before all of my fights.
The overall point of the talk is to stop trying to prevent stress, and, to a further extent, stop thinking of stress as a negative thing. Kelly encourages you to, instead, understand it and learn how to use it.
Since this is a blog on a Muay Thai website, I’m going to use my Muay Thai experiences to explain it. Plus, this way I don’t steal too many of Kelly’s words.
First, let’s remember what stress is. Stress is a natural response designed to help you survive. Obviously, life isn’t the same for us humans as it was thousands of years ago. So stress can feel like an awful, useless thing these days. Like many things though, that last statement is only true if you believe it. If you believe that it is a useful and good thing, then that’s what it will be for you.
Stepping into the ring to fight someone who trained to hurt you can be on the extreme end of a stressful situation. No matter how tough you are, it can scare you. Honestly it should scare you at least a little bit. So now you’re standing in the ring, staring at someone who wants to hurt you and trained to do so. You’re feeling stressed, no doubt.
You can feel your heart beating, your breath getting heavy, sweat starting to seep from your pores, vision tunneling a bit. These are all stress responses, and it’s bad, right? WRONG! Stress is helping you. Stress is doing this to you for a reason, and you just need to remind yourself what that reason is. Stress is preparing you and your body for the war ahead. Your heart is beating faster to ensure blood is getting to your muscles so they can perform at their best. Your breath is deep to keep your brain oxygenated so you can think clearly. Sweat is cooling you down as you’re about to generate lots of heat fighting. Vision is tunneling so you only see the opponent in front of you and can’t lose focus on any other distractions.
I performed so much better in stressful situations (especially fighting) when I took a second to remind myself why I was feeling the things I was feeling. Again, this applies to all stressful situations, but I want to ensure I’m staying in my lane and telling you how it applies to Muay Thai. I don’t think it applies only to those who want to fight. It’s stressful trying to learn a new technique in front of others, it’s stressful being told to throw 100 kicks when you know you’ll feel tired after 10, and the list can go on and on. Just know the stress is normal, and it’s not this evil thing despite the way it can feel. It’s showing up to help you—so let it.
Again, I encourage all who found this interesting to check out Kelly McGonigal’s TED Talk as she goes further into details about how this mind shift can allow you to live longer. There’s also some cool tidbits about how being part of a community is beneficial to your health…did you know being a part of a martial arts gym, like The Clinic Muay Thai Gym, puts you into a community? 😁
In this modern day, social media, work dynamics, school cliques, etc. have us feeling the effects of stress and feeling like we are making enemies. We all have enough enemies. Let’s allow stress to be our ally.
