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Eustress Article

Definition
Eustress occurs when the gap between what one has and what one wants is slightly pushed, but not overwhelmed. The goal is not too far out of reach but is still slightly more than one can handle. This fosters challenge and motivation since the goal is in sight. The function of challenge is to motivate a person toward improvement and a goal. Challenge is an opportunity-related emotion that allows people to achieve unmet goals. Eustress is indicated by hope and active engagement. Eustress has a significantly positive correlation with life satisfaction and hope. However, experiencing chronic stress, either in the form of distress or eustress, is negative.

Self-Efficacy in Relation to Eustress
Eustress is primarily based on perceptions. It is how you perceive your given situation and how you perceive your given task. It is not what is actually happening, but a person’s perception of what is happening. Eustress is thus related to self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is one’s judgment of how they can carry out a required task, action or role. Some contributing factors are a person’s beliefs about the effectiveness about their options for courses of action and their ability to perform those actions. If a person has low self-efficacy, they will see the demand as more distressful than eustressful because the perceived level of what the person has is lower. When a person has high self-efficacy, they can set goals higher and be motivated to achieve them. The goal then is to increase self-efficacy and skill in order to enable people to increase eustress.

Eustress and flow
When an individual appraises a situation as stressful, they add the label for distress or eustress to the issue at hand. If a situation induces eustress, the person may feel motivated and can experience flow. Positive psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, created this concept which is described as the moments when one is completely absorbed into an enjoyable activity with no awareness of surroundings. Flow is an extremely productive state in which an individual experiences their prime performance. The core elements are absorption, enjoyment and intrinsic motivation. Flow is the “ultimate eustress experience – the epitome of eustress”. Hargrove, Nelson and Cooper described eustress as being focused on a challenge, fully present and exhilarated which almost exactly mirrors the definition of flow. Flow is considered a peak experience “the single most joyous, happiest, most blissful moment of your life.”

Factors that Enhance Eustress
There are several factors that may increase or decrease one’s chances of experiencing eustress and, through eustress, experiencing flow.
 * Stress is also influenced by hereditary predispositions and expectations of society. Thus, a person could already be at a certain advantage or disadvantage toward experiencing eustress.
 * If a person enjoys experiencing new things and believes they have importance in the world, they are more likely to experience flow.
 * Flow is negatively related to self-directedness, or an extreme sense of autonomy.
 * Persistence is positively related to flow and closely related to intrinsic motivation.
 * People with an internal locus of control, or high levels of self-control, have an increased chance of flow because they believe they can increase their skill level to match the challenge.
 * Perfectionism, however, is negatively related to flow. A person downplays their skill levels therefore making the gap too big, and they perceive the challenge to be too large to experience flow. On the opposite end of perfectionism, however, there are increased chances of flow.
 * Active procrastination is positively related to flow. By actively delaying work, the person increases the challenge. Then once the challenge is matched with the person’s high skill levels, the person can experience flow. Those who passively procrastinate or do not procrastinate do not have these same experiences. It is only with the purposeful procrastination that a person is able to increase the challenge.
 * Mindset is a significant factor in determining distress versus eustress. Optimistic people and those with high self-esteem contribute to eustress experiences. The positive mindset increases the chances of eustress and a positive response to stressors. Currently, the predominant mindset toward stress is that stress is debilitating. However, mindsets toward stress can be changed.

Occupational Eustress
Much of the research on eustress has focused on its presence in the workplace. In the workplace, stress can often be interpreted as a challenge, which generally denotes positive eustress, or as a hindrance, which refers to distress that interferes with one's ability to accomplish a job or task.[4]

Research has focused on increasing eustress in the workplace, in an effort to promote positive reactions to an inevitably stressful environment.[4] Companies are interested in learning more about eustress and its positive effects to increase productivity. Eustress creates a better environment for employees, which makes them perform better and cost less. Occupational stress costs the United States somewhere in between 200 and 300 billion dollars per year. If this were eustress instead of distress, these companies would retain this money and the U.S. economy could improve as well. Stress has also been linked to the six leading causes of death: “disease, accidents, cancer, liver disease, lung ailments, suicide.” If workers get sick and/or die, there is obviously a cost to the company in sick time and training new employees. It is better to have productive, happy employees. Eustress is necessary for achievement. Eustress is related to well-being and positive attitudes and thus increases work performance.

Techniques such as Stress Management Interventions (SMI) have been employed to increase occupational eustress. SMI's often incorporate exercise, meditation, and relaxation techniques to decrease distress and increase positive perceptions of stress in the workplace.[4] Rather than decrease stress in the workplace, SMI techniques attempt to increase eustress with positive reactions to stressful stimuli.[4]

STRESS ARTICLE Psychological stress is considered as the gap between what an individual has and what they want to have. This could be in any field of the person’s life: work, relationships, family or health. The gap can vary in size, which plays a factor on the type of stress the person experiences. The term stress has a Latin origin meaning to injure, bother or constrain. The gap is seen as something bothersome that needs to be addressed.

Variations of Stress
Selye proposed that there are four variations of stress. On one axis, there is good stress (eustress) and bad stress (distress). On the other is overstress (hyperstress) and understress (hypostress). The goal is to balance these as much as possible. The ultimate goal would be to balance hyperstress and hypostress perfectly and have as much eustress as possible. It is extremely useful for a productive lifestyle because it makes working enjoyable instead of a chore, as seen with distress.

Popular Conflation of Types
A very much overlooked side of stress is its positive adaptations. Positive psychological stress can lead to motivation and challenge instead of anxiety. The effects of experiencing eustress, which is positive stress, versus distress, which is negative stress, are significant. While colloquially lumped together, the various types of stress should be treated as separate concepts. Distress causes a slowing of working pace while eustress can lead to motivational states such as flow.

Differentiation between Eustress and Distress
Eustress comes from the Greek root “eu” which means good as in euphoria. Eustress is when a person perceives a stressor as positive. Distress stems from the Latin root “dis” as in dissonance or disagreement. Distress is a threat to the quality of life. It is when a demand vastly exceeds a person’s capabilities.

Neutral Stressors
Stress is a non-specific response. It is neutral, and what varies is the degree of response. It is all about the context of the individual and how they perceive the situation. He defined stress as “the nonspecific (that is, common) result of any demand upon the body, be the effect mental or somatic.” This includes the medical definition of stress as a physical demand and the colloquial definition of stress as a psychological demand. A stressor is inherently neutral meaning that the same stressor can cause either distress or eustress. It is individual differences and responses that induce either distress or eustress.