God and universe are system. We are constantly interacting with them – with God, one another and the environment around us. The cycles of interaction (feedback loops) between you and all things in your life can largely affect how you feel day-to-day. If you are getting positive feedback from others in your life and your environment, you feel good. This is what we call resonance. It is the feeling you get when you are doing something you were born to do or when you are spending time with someone who just gets you. You feel vitalized and creative. On the other hand, if you are getting negative feedback from others and your environment, you feel stressed, worn out, and maybe even depressed.

The problem is we do not do a good job of examining these cycles of interaction and altering them to create less “drag.” We just resign ourselves to living with stress, taking respite where we can. Or we try to avoid altogether the things that create stress for us. When we encounter this sort of drag produced by these negative cycles of interaction, it is important to take a look at them and see how we can do things differently. I’m not saying we can rid ourselves of all stress, but sometimes slight adjustments in the way we work, interact with others and our environment can make a big difference. Energy seems to be at a premium, but physics would tell us there’s always the same amount of energy. We just need to use it the right way to conserve it and amplify it.

We all encounter stress – in our jobs, our relationships and our physical limitations. We also know, though, that people are able to endure immensely stressful situations. We could conclude that some people can just handle more stress, but we can also see that all people are amazingly adaptable when they need to be and choose to be. People who work in emergency services are a good example. They encounter trauma all day long. If they were in touch emotionally with the reality of their day-to-day, they would crumble. Many of them will tell you they disengage their emotional responses to the intensity of what they encounter every day. This is an adaptive way of responding to intense and sometimes hopeless situations.

Stress in other jobs is no different. In fact, it is less intense! If you are encountering stress at work, there is probably something you can do to alter the way you interact with it to conserve your energy and improve your efficiency. Your stress is made up of how what you encounter everyday interacts with who you are as a person to create this sort of drag. You might be worn out by people at work. Instead of being life-giving, relationships with co-workers can seem life-sucking. You may feel like you need some decompression time when you get home – and you probably do, but what is it about these relationships that drains your energy? Are you worrying about what those people think? Are there certain people that bother you? What is it about them that bothers you? Or better yet, what is it about you that the way they are bothers you? Insights like these are vitally important to handling and overcoming your stress. If you can put your finger on it, then you can make changes that help all of these interactions with everything in your environment create less drag.

Maybe it would be a good approach, instead of always trying to escape our stress, to create an energizing sense of resonance in our relationships with others and our environment. Instead of giving in to stress, we need to find our adaptive ability to be resilient in it. All of us are capable of improving our sense of peace and resonance with the world around us. It just takes some well-placed time and energy.