Definition of Stress

What is it?

Definition of Stress by Scott Canipe

Stress is something that affects your daily life. As soon as you wake up in the morning, you encounter certain circumstances throughout your activities in which stresses are met in some capacity. 

Your career, family responsibilities, sicknesses that you may experience, un-foreseen scenarios, mistakes, financial woes, etc. can heap unbearable stress factors that can lead to harmful results such as depression and disease.

However, stress is relative and it can be used to either help you or produce negative effects.

The Meaning

What is the definition of stress? It typically means, “To subject to physical or mental pressure, strain or tension.” That is a good Webster dictionary definition of stress. However, for the purpose of this article, I want to go a little deeper with this definition of stress and related to a powerful universal principle that affects all of our lives.

We all have a relative reality or organized systems that we live in. Our daily routines that we are familiar that chart our course. This could include the normal 9 to 5 job, being in a relationship, maintaining our health at a certain level, raising children, etc.

Whenever, unforeseen pressure or tension threatens our organized systems, we become alarmed, because this stress can possibly change our relative reality from an orderly state to a chaotic or volatile one.

Order/Chaos Theory

This is a universal principle that is applied in mathematics and also life in general. It typically states that out of chaos comes order, then it is reciprocated and recycled. In any orderly system, there is always a tendency for it to become in disarray or chaotic. This happens in many facets of life.

A shining example of this is found in marriage. Unfortunately, nearly 60% of all marriages end in divorce in the United States of America. Initially when a couple starts dating everything is very happy and the butterflies abound. The two people fall in love, move in together and they end up getting married.

However, there is a tendency, over time that those that fell in love initially become at odds with each other. This happens for many and varied reasons, but typically whenever some sort of outside stress enters into the relationship. So that which was once happy and blissful become volatile. Divorce is the result. Each of the parties move on to find another partner and sometimes get married again.

This order/chaos principle is found in the money markets, politics, physical fitness, and the list is endless.

Where It All Began

Another fascinating example of order coming out of chaos is explanation of the origin of the earth. An evolutionist explains it vastly different from a creationist, however they are strikingly similar regarding this principle.

1. The creation story of Genesis chapter 1:1-3, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved across the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light: and there was light.”

In these particular versus denote the first day and the six days of creation. Out of a dark and chaotic state came an orderly state as a result of the spoken word of God. Of course there were five more days to make the rest.

2. The Big Bang theory - Most evolutionists believe in the Big Bang theory and feel that it is the origin of what we have on earth today. It is defined as a cataclysmic explosion from a small volume of matter at an extremely high temperature and density that took place between 10 and 20 billion years ago.

They both represent order coming out of disorder as a result of some sort of stress or pressure. God using the emphasis of the spoken word and the stresses of the explosion regarding the Big Bang theory.

The chaos/order principle is found everywhere in life as we are all trying to maintain homeostasis in whatever we do. Personally, I feel that to keep an orderly system from falling into a chaotic one is solely based on maintenance. Whatever productive dynamic that we have in our lives, must be maintained, if not, it is destined to go from an orderly state to a chaotic state.

In a nutshell, a simple definition of stress is something that is subjected to pressure, strain or tension. Stress is the main impetus behind the order/chaos principle. This can cause many problems within our relative reality if the stresses are not dealt with appropriately so.