Have you ever heard a well-meaning person tell you to stop frowning or making a face because it will cause wrinkles? Well, there is some truth to that, though there are other aspects that can be just as important to consider. Why exactly are you frowning and making faces that someone is concerned will cause wrinkles? The answer to that is more than likely “stress.”
All of us encounter stress on a regular basis. It is important to know how to cope with our stressors and reduce them as much as possible to help slow down aging. Stress is a slow killer, and it isn’t just in the wrinkles. When we go through stressful and traumatic experiences, it can cause negative impacts on our bodies. We can be impacted to the point that we are even prone to developing grey hairs. Extreme fear and stress can have huge impacts.
Slow Down Aging
When we are living with constant stress, it can actually begin to change our DNA in a way that shortens telomeres, which is a complicated way of saying that we are speeding up our cellular aging. It makes our inner structures more fragile and our ability to produce strong and vital DNA strands. Instead, they are more vulnerable and they have a tendency to get old and die at a lot higher of a rate.
Stressing out is a major issue that goes beyond grey hairs and stress wrinkles. It’s so important to think about the things that cause us stress so that we can begin addressing them. We are often feeling pressure to be perfect; to look and present ourselves a certain way and we can easily begin to focus on things that are imperfect about ourselves and cause ourselves even more stress than is necessary.
Embracing Yourself and Reducing Stress
Embracing who you are and where you are at is so important. You are the person who most needs to be in your own corner. You should not be making your own life harder on yourself if you can help it. Instead of fixating on your faults and your flaws, think about the things that you are good at and the things that make you happy. Instead of feeling like a failure when you aren’t where you want to be, instead, see every opportunity to grow and get better at something that was once challenging to you.
Power of Self Acceptance
None of us are perfect and life can be overwhelming and hectic. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is to slow down and get things figured out for ourselves. We need to be able to embrace our journeys and be okay with where we are at and know that every single day we are doing whatever is in our power to do better and keep trying.
When we give in to the stress and don’t learn to identify what our stressors are and ways to accept our situations, we are harming ourselves. Instead, embrace who you are and just breathe!
