Is Pinterest a prescription for melting stress and boosting willpower?

OK so uber-stressed on projects and decided to relax with a little Pinterest. Now ready to go again! Who’d a thunk it.

That was moi on facebook yesterday.  And to think I just heard of Pinterest a scant 2 weeks ago and rolled my eyes at another social media place to keep up with.

Friends on facebook convinced me to think differently and check it out.  Several kindly sent me invitations (evidently the only way to fly on Pinterest).  Kicking and screaming all the way, I checked it out.

What I discovered is that Pinterest is easier to use than any other ‘social media’ out there and is simply an electronic  bulletin board where you can ‘pin’ images of your favorite things.  If you’re ahead of me on the social media curve – which isn’t hard (I was 3 years late to facebook, I believe) – then you know this already.

And wherever you get to focus on your ‘favorites’, there you have a place of fun, joy and relaxation.  Am I right?  The anti-dotes to stress.

What Is Stress?  And how do you manage it? 

As if you didn’t know.  We all know that stress is a physical response  generated in reaction to particular events – real or imagined. It is your body’s built-in way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength, stamina, and heightened alertness.

Your body responds to stressors  with the easily recognized stress response, scrambling the nervous system and churning out specific hormones.  This results in elevated heart rate, surges of fight-or-flight hormones such as adrenaline, increased breathing rate, and elevated blood pressure.  Blood vessels open wider to let more blood flow to large muscle groups which are now on high alert.  Your liver releases some of its stored glucose to create a ready supply of energy. Your pupils dilate to improve your vision.   All of these physical changes put your body and mind on high alert to respond to whatever is the emergency at hand.

A snapshot from my Pinterest page, definitely a work in progress!

Your body’s stress response helps you to perform well under pressure. It’s not inherently a bad thing. But the stress response can also hijack your nervous system.  It can  hammer away at the pre-frontal cortex of your brain, sapping your willpower to make better choices and ‘get the jobs done’.   In reality this means disabling attitudes can sneak in:  Procrastination, task avoidance, weakened ability to resist junk food, and skipping that workout in favor of the couch.

Stress anti-dotes:   Move, breathe, relaxation, Pinterest?

With the Willpower Workout series, you’ve had a refresher course on simple 5-minute strategies that relieve stress, bolster brain power by watering the pre-frontal cortex of your brain – willpower and focus central.   Quick bouts of exercise (see 5 minute willpower workout #1: Exercise, the closest thing to a willpower magic bullet) such as Fit Quickies, and 5 minutes of a simple breathing meditation actually change your body chemistry, dissolving and disarming the stress response.  Guided relaxation will do it too.

This is because the parasympathetic nervous system steps in to restore equilibrium, calm stress and control impulsive action. Exercise, guided relaxation, slowed breathing and meditation do this for you.  Creative arts have this effect too.

And so does fun, play, and connecting with happy memories.  And that is what Pinterest, after all, is all about.

Pinterest and the parasympathic nervous system response

When we invite ourselves to connect with positive associations, creativity, and fun, we invite the parasympathetic nervous system response.  Pat Wolfe of Mind Matters, Inc. taught me this years ago in relation to the classroom environment.  Building fun and play into the classroom schedule and curriculum have been proven to improve student concentration and retention.  It’s like we need a few minutes of free-wheeling fun to allow things to sink in and prepare us for the next task.  We get our willpower watered to carry on and, as we say in Boot Camp Mind,  get the job done.

So the next time you’re caught pooling images and finding favorite places and faces to pin to your Pinterest board, just tell ’em your trainer told you to do it.  Health and fitness are all about fun, too.

Have you a Pinterest board?  Please share how it has helped you to destress and relax in comments below.  I’m just getting started with my page,  taking a few minutes every now and then to relax and enjoy finding favorites to pin up.  Please come by and let’s connect by clicking on this button:

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