Have we become blind to speed?

It's easy to blame outside factors when you're suffering from stress. The causes and solutions can often be found within ourselves – in our own behavior and our ability to handle the situations we encounter. I don't dispute that external pressure hasn't increased today, especially in working life. Words like profit, efficiency, speed, availability, maximization, learning, and deadlines all contribute to us mentally landing in a "push yourself" mindset and cycle. Here, the demands coming from outside meet things like our self-image, our belief in our own ability, our self-esteem, and our past experiences.

I'm particularly concerned about young adults entering working life and their ability to find balance between all these demands and their own capacity to cope. High demands are already placed on children in both school and hobbies, but at the latest from 9th grade onward. They're expected to strive for top grades to get into upper secondary school – and not just any school, but a well-regarded one. You might ask yourself: who is it that sets these demands? After that, the pressure doesn't ease up at all – it continues for many years, even throughout their studies. During this time, they're also supposed to land a summer job, preferably evening and/or weekend jobs too, and good ones at that, ones that will be useful for the future. Striving is something we're trained into, slowly but surely – we should be able to do more, plan the future well in advance, keep moving forward, upward, and so on. We're trained to stress and pressure ourselves mentally, and it becomes automatic – an automatic behavior in our subconscious, telling us this is simply how life works, that it's normal. When the young person has "finished" their studies, possibly already carrying some mild burnout, they're expected to head straight into full-time working life. The perception can often be "now I should know everything," "now I need a job that matches my education," and you're expected to aim high right away, which means "I" need to stand out, be unique and competent. Is that even possible?

The demands, and the stress they cause, are based on the idea that we must perform and achieve. Performing our way through the different phases of life – I'd describe it as the performances eating us up from the inside, so that we don't even notice how life and our striving carry us along; it's not us living the life. This isn't just about young adults, but all of us – the risk of burning out is genuinely high, and it can hit younger people quite quickly. The danger here is that we train ourselves into this, into the tempo of performance and striving, and we don't notice the speed increasing. Sure, goals, ambitions, motivation, and enthusiasm are all good things – but we can become blind to speed.

Over time, stress can cause a range of different symptoms, which are the body's and brain's way of signaling that we're out of balance and need rest. Common symptoms include, among others, worse sleep at night, irritability, performing even more, skin rashes, and withdrawing from social life, among other things. The body and brain run at high speed – figuratively, the brain spins like a tornado, so it's only logical that nighttime sleep becomes disrupted. On top of this, the brain is constantly fed impressions from our phones; we don't allow our brain any real recovery, because mindlessly watching a show or scrolling through Facebook isn't rest for the brain – quite the opposite. The way we live at this hectic pace directly affects the way we breathe. In other words, breathing quality deteriorates, which worsens the body's oxygenation, which in turn affects our energy levels, among other things.

What I consider important is equipping ourselves with tools and learning self-awareness that we can apply in different situations we encounter, and have already encountered. Learning HOW to create balance, so that we can more easily and better handle demands and pressure – both from outside and from ourselves – simply to get through everyday life and have the energy for it. It's possible to train yourself into new behavioral patterns, though it can take time and requires continuous practice. It's time to pause and learn how to recover, in order to maintain our ability to function.

Tanja Wickström/With You Personal and Mental Training