Increasing the difficulty of activities improves the ability to cope with stress
Did you know that meaningful and purposeful activities are effective in coping with stress, which has become a part of daily life? Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan from the Occupational Therapy Department of Istanbul Atlas University Faculty of Health Sciences points out that coping with stress can be made easier by adding activities that are good for the person and make them feel good while doing them to daily life. According to Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan, it is important to establish a balance between the difficulty of the activity and the person's skills. However, the skills and difficulties need to increase in a certain proportion. Özkan emphasized the importance of finding, discovering and being involved in what is good for people in order to continue their lives healthily.
Dr. Şüheda Özkan, from the Occupational Therapy Department of Istanbul Atlas University, Faculty of Health Sciences, said that meaningful and purposeful activities that are good for the person are effective in coping with stress.
Indicating that stress is an inseparable part of modern life, Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan said, “The concepts of speed, tempo and performance that have left their mark on modern societies and our age have made stress an almost inseparable part of our daily lives and a normal functioning. The human organism is constantly interacting with internal and external factors throughout the day. The stimuli it receives at every moment disrupt the harmony of the organism after exceeding a certain limit. In order to repair the disrupted structure, the organism seeks harmony, balance and order. This is called stress.”
Meaningful and purposeful activity should be discovered through experiences.
Noting that meaningful and purposeful activities play a role in coping with stress, Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan said, “Meaningful and purposeful activities are defined as activities that enable the person to achieve a specific goal, either personally or culturally, and are determined by the person’s needs and interests in a specific environmental context. Therefore, the person should discover these activities through their own experiences. Activities that help the person relax can be one or more than one.”
Work done with great passion brings pleasure
Özkan, who pointed out the importance of people doing their jobs with great passion, said, “Mihaly Csikszentmihályi, the founder of the theory called 'Flow Theory' in psychology, and his research group conducted many studies to investigate what is important for people's well-being. In their studies, which they first conducted with the participation of athletes and artists, they observed that people do their jobs with great passion and that the experience itself is enjoyable, which is effective in continuing these activities for many years. When they conducted their studies on a wider population, they emphasized that this situation, which they called optimum experience and flow state, is defined in the same way by people of all age groups, regardless of cultural differences. As a result, the theory called flow theory has become a widely preferred strategy for both clinicians and individuals in supporting healthy living and coping with stress.”
Increasing difficulty in activities improves coping skills
Stating that using activities as a strategy to cope with stress is something that human beings have been doing for centuries, Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan stated that an important point here is to establish a balance between the difficulty of the activity and the person's skills.
Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan said: “Difficulties should increase in proportion to our skills. This is one of the factors that allows us to stay in the flow. If the level of difficulty caused by the activity exceeds our skills, it is inevitable for us to feel anxiety, disappointment and more stress. On the contrary, if the activity is too easy for us and does not give us any feedback or self-control, it will lead to a feeling of boredom. Therefore, it has been emphasized in studies that a certain amount of stress, or rather difficulty and the need to cope, is linked to flow experiences, and that focusing on the activity we are in and losing the concept of time allows us to cope with stress through meaningful and purposeful activities.
The difficulty of an activity refers to the balance between a person’s skill and the demands of the activity itself. As a person’s control over the activity and their related skills increase, the activity becomes more difficult. Let’s take the experience of playing an instrument as an example: At first, you learn how to hold the instrument and the basic notes. Suddenly switching to playing a piece exceeds your skill level and causes more stress. However, over time, as you gain control over the instrument and learn to control your body while playing the instrument, you can play increasingly more difficult pieces, and over time, you may want to push yourself even further and even compose your own piece. As we all gain control over the activities we engage in, we naturally want to do the next level of difficulty. Because our brains develop on this same principle.”
It should create a sense of belonging and a sense of accomplishment…
Özkan stated that meaningful and purposeful activities are defined as activities that create a sense of belonging, provide a sense of accomplishment, and involve the interaction of past experiences and current skills. He said that meaningful and purposeful activities are specific to the person and can be free time activities or productive activities. Özkan said, “For example, while painting can be a hobby for a person and help the person cope with stress, for someone who is a painter, if this painting activity creates relaxation, coping with stress, and flow experiences, it is a meaningful and purposeful activity.”
How should the activity be?
Dr. Faculty Member Şüheda Özkan said that activities with the following features can help people cope with stress:
- A person has a state of concentration in which his/her attention is focused on one point at that moment.
- The fusion of a person's behavior and awareness
- A person's sense of control over a situation or activity
- Loss of sense of time; alteration of one's subjective experience of time
- The experience of the activity is intrinsically rewarding
- The person receives immediate feedback during the activity.
- Feeling of peace, loss of ego
- A person's sense of having the potential to succeed
It is important to find out what is good for us.
Stating that many events that a person experiences throughout their life can develop beyond their control and that all of these situations have an effect on whether they feel good or bad, Dr. Şüheda Özkan from the Occupational Therapy Department of the Faculty of Health Sciences emphasized the importance of finding, discovering and being involved in what is good for them in order to live a healthy life.
