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The greatest weapon against stress meaning: In this article, we talk about the meaning of stress, how to deal with it and common pitfalls of distraction. Stress is not out there to kill us but can be a very powerful ally based on the questions we ask ourselves. The trick is to choose one thought over another and coach a new behaviour to get the best results out of yourself.

The greatest weapon against stress meaning

Before jumping into the meaning of the greatest weapon against stress, let’s talk about what stress means. The dictionary simply mentions stress as a change that causes strain (Source). The physical strains are easy to explain because we all know what to do about them. But the mental strains are harder to deal with.

It is usually an occurrence or a change that causes us stress. I’d like to go back to the basics to identify what’s causing this stress. The simplest way is to start with questions:

• What’s causing me to behave like this?
• Why is this situation affecting me so much?
• What can I do to get away or change this thought process?

The greatest weapon against stress meaning is your choice to stop and ask these questions. Your emotions are the most valuable thing in life trying to tell you something. Stress or change is just an occurrence, but the emotion tells you how you feel about it. We’ve been trained to react to this stress so that we can feel better. And people have told us to neglect these intense emotions because they don’t know how to deal with them.

The questions you ask yourself give a vent for these emotions which are dying to come out. Focus on what this stress is telling you and you’re halfway there to discovering the greatest weapon against stress meaning.

Choose one thought over another

Let’s dive straight into it. The trick to handling your stress is in choosing your emotions and responses. This is a hard bit and requires you to train a habit. The quickest solutions marketed to us by the advertising industry are to have caffeine or chocolate, smoke and whatnot.

You can easily see that these are distractions and don’t really give you anything to fight stress. They are taking your mind away from the stressful event so that you can focus on the distraction. But, we all know that we still have to come back and deal with the same stressful occurrence.

I’m not saying anything different to what you’re doing. All I’m saying is – to choose one thought over another to deal with stress. But, my suggestion is merely emotional – you can choose a better, different habit which can help you coach this behaviour. You don’t always have to follow the crowd (Related: It takes nothing to join the crowd)

To choose one thought over another – go back to the questions and listen to your emotions. Forget about doing something immediately about it. Take a pause and listen to what your thoughts are telling you. Everything else is relatively easy. Your emotions are the most important and the hardest thing to win with.

Tthe greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another

This is purely a reiteration of William James’ quote. But you ought to look for the beauty in this quote to delve into the greatest weapon against stress meaning. Stress need not be something that breaks you. It can be a wonderful thing trying to tell you something.

Like all emotions, stress has its beauty and a message. Instead of going into a shell and worrying about stress – be a bit curious. Understand what the emotions are telling you about. Dig a little deeper than saying I’m frustrated or angry. These emotions might be hiding what’s really underneath.

Respect your emotions and be curious about them. Only they can lead you in the right direction and everything else can just be a distraction. The common methods of stress management give you sufficient resources to deal with stress. The most important point in this article is about your ability to choose one thought over another.

Your greatest weapon against stress meaning is in the way you respect your emotions and work with them.

Our greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

— William James (Source)