The pressure's on
I've been talking to my junior high students recently about stress; where it comes from, what it causes, how to manage it. It's been an interesting discussion and I've been surprised by their insights. We were discussing the differences between pressure and stress, how pressure can actually be good us. Pressure is unavoidable in life. We all have relationships, responsibilities, and time constraints to name a few basics. We have expectations of ourselves and other people have expectations for us. Those aren't necessary bad things. They can push us to excel and succeed. We can sometimes accomplish much more than we thought possible when the pressure is on and it causes us to rise to meet the challenge. Sometimes however, or really many times if we are honest, the applied pressures feel like they exceed our capabilities or threaten our well being. People expect more than we feel that we can give. The amount of responsibilities we...