Whenever you have to make a tough decision in your life, you cause your body some undue stress. For most people, this is a temporary issue that doesn’t cause any long-term effects. For others, the effects can be seriously damaging.

Let’s imagine that we have two people who both plan to be students of cooking schools. They are each trying to decide whether they want to attend the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago or the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute. Both of them realize that this is a big decision to make and are feeling stress about trying to decide.

One of these students will experience moderate symptoms of stress. This could include sleeplessness for a few nights while mulling over the decision or headaches brought on by the stress. When the decision is made, these symptoms will go away. In contrast, the other student will experience high levels of stress which may raise blood pressure and cause the onset of long-term addictive behaviors such as emotion-based eating or daily smoking.

Each of these students experienced the same type of stress and yet they dealt with it differently. This points to the fact that it is not situations themselves which cause us stress but rather the way that we opt to deal with decision-making in those situations.

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