Stress monkey management

The genes we inherit help determine whether we have a cool head or a short fuse, scientists have found, according to The Daily Mail. Now I haven’t looked into this study in any great detail (I haven’t hunted out the original scientific paper), but I am a bit sceptical, based on stuff I have read in the past. The bottom line is that it is highly unlikely that a single gene could be assigned this attribute.

It does make sense that the way we react to a given stimulus might (among a load of factors) be down to how much our bodies releases neurotransmitters such as serotonin or dopamine (which ultimately comes from our genes), and maybe we end up a bit predisposed based on our genetic make-up. But at the end of the day I think that we choose how we react to a stimulus and most of the time this, I believe, is about conditioning and habits formed over time. Therefore it is possible, to relearn how you react to a given situation.

Now I’m not saying that it is easy to break an old habit like getting really angry and fly off the handle. But based on the fact that there are loads of studies that show that being angry is bad for your health it has got to be worth doing.People that know me well will know that at times I can be a stress monkey and can let things get on top of me. I do know how to channel this negative energy and not end up in stress hell – but I sometimes fail to enact the necessary thinking (because that is all I have to do) to deal with stress properly – which in turn has a rolling stone effect and just makes me feel more stressed.

Us humans are complicated wotsits, we spend too much on negative stuff and forget how fortunate we are. So this post is for you Crump. Remember it.