The Fine Line of Coping and Thriving: Which Side Do You Want to Be On?

Do you realize that your life may be a lot more similar to great powerful achievers such as Hillary or Bill Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Stephen Curry, or Bill Gates than you might think? That's because there's a very fine line between struggling or coping, and moving ahead to flourishing, thriving. We are all living on this razor's edge continuum. The New York Times best-selling author and spiritual teacher Michael Singer says that the average person's life, with all the stress and challenge that goes into daily living, is similar to the quest of a mountain climber; that in other words, we're each scaling our own Kilimanjaro every day but don't realize it! I wholeheartedly agree with Singer, in fact it's something I have always preached.

It actually requires optimal performance to simply make it through a regular day. We have to deal with serious illness, agitated and abusive bosses or mates, toxic substances in our environment, the exponentially speeding pace of technology and the information age, drugs and other social problems, increasing traffic, deteriorating infrastructure in our communities --these are all the stressors we are contending with moment by moment. No walk in the park!

There is a fine line between coping and thriving. The problem is that we sell ourselves short - we don't give ourselves enough credit for being able to walk this thin line, to make it through this daily maze of obstacles and stressors. If we did give ourselves some credit for this, we may find we also begin to see the possibility we could even do more, we each have the potential to become the dynamic, flourishing, amazing person we perhaps inwardly desire to be.

There is actually a scientific principal which shows how this works. In the field of psychology there is something called the Yerkes-Dodson Curve developed by Robert M. Yerkes and John Dodson at the beginning of the 20th century, 1908.

The Yerkes-Dodson Curve displays the relationship between arousal and performance, something we are each subjected to, no matter if we are high or low profile, or no matter our performance level, or socio-economic status. It is a completely individualistic phenomenon. The main idea behind this theory is that when we find the exact level of arousal (or stress) we will perform at our best, period. We move from merely coping to thriving! The challenge is that we each need to find this "sweet spot" so to speak, which can be daunting at times, and we do that by crafting our life and lifestyle in a healthy, enthusiastic, and realistic fashion.