A Conceptual Study on Stress in the Changing Scenario

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. William James
Life is like a marathon wherein everyone having their own targets before they complete it. Some are able to complete the full race and others… the reason being stress, or to be more accurate pressure, has become an unavoidable part of everyday life, meaning different things to each of us. You only have to pick up a newspaper, read a magazine, watch television, listen to the radio or walk into any High Street bookshop and see the many books written on the subject of stress, to realize that we perceive it to be a big problem. Life in the 21st Century is infinitely far more complex than it has ever been. We were never designed to live in this complex, modern world with its many demands on us. We live in a crowded, noisy society that we often refer to as the rat race. Our lives are run by deadlines, the clock, modern technology, mobile phones, pagers, faxes, computers, satellites and a hundred and one other demands and pressures. Many of us have too many tasks and too little time. We drive our children through traffic-clogged roads to maybe two or three different schools. We then try to get to work on time; through more congested roads with millions more cars than there used to be, or we deal with delayed trains as some of us may have to commute hundreds of miles to work. While we are at work we have to operate computers, learn newer versions of software, deal with faxes, phones, and manage many tasks and people, often without adequate training or support. Research has shown that today we have fewer friends than we used to and live in a more fragmented, isolated society with lower levels of social support, which is an important buffer of stress. Due to excessive pressure or stress we often fail to draw a line between the priorities in life. This again results in failure of the tasks which we take up. Thus the main aim of the paper is to bring out to the readers meaning of stress, its causes, effects and how to overcome stress in this modern world.