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A Mind Under Stress
Can stress improve your quality of life?
I moved to Colorado for a fresh start. And to ski.
After many years, I can do pretty much any terrain on the mountain now. Recently an interesting thought occurred to me while sitting on a ski lift. On wild runs, where error means extreme injury or worse, I’m focused only on one thing.
The next turn.
There’s no time or place for thinking otherwise, the times where I have had injuries is because I was thinking about not getting injured. “Don’t hit the tree, don’t ride that slope, don’t lose balance”. Unfortunately, whatever I seem to focus on is what comes to be.
In moments of extreme stress, it is very challenging for the mind to consider multiple things.
I’ve also heard stories of military training in live environments, with all of the simulated lights, noises and smells of active combat. While this is all going on, the instructors are blaring the same song on repeat over some loud speakers.
At the end, few if any people doing the exercise had any idea what the song was, or that one was even playing.
Acute stress can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on cognitive performance. From the results of a study by the NIH:
