Students studying in groups in the library, rushing through their daily homework; students tapping furiously at the keyboards, their eyes sweeping through lines and lines of words; students dashing past, running to their next destination for their important lectures. Throughout their entire globe, a phenomenon is happening. Students and adults alike, are faced with a constant pressure that they have to bear: stress. Is stress really an unwelcomed visitor into our world, our society and our private lives? Undoubtedly, it is. It sweeps through the entire nation, entering houses stealthily under the cover of darkness, and like a gas, it enters our bedrooms, sliding through the doors and affecting everyone, causing people to do several extremist means, such as committing suicide, just to escape.. On the other hand, committing suicide may not be the only result of stress, in fact it actually even leads to self-motivation and peer pressure, which causes people to do better than usual.

Stress is constantly surrounding us, like how the hot and humid weather bears down its weight upon us. People may believe that stress is harmful to oneself and may even affect one’s grades. However, self-motivation may also bloom from one’s stressful life. For instance, someone who leads a stressful life and is able to cope with stress, and has poor grades and a poor attitude to life, may be saddened by his grades and in the end, he is able to activate the potential that is innate in him, through self-motivation. Stress activates self-motivation as the willingness in him to do well and excel is present. Therefore, one may think that stress is harmful to one, but yet, they do not think of the benefits that stress may bring.

There are different types of motivation, such as self-motivation and peer pressure. All these contribute to the benefits of stress. However, one may never understand how peer pressure can help oneself. When there is stress, the people around you will also be affected. As you are self-motivated, you will become more hardworking, more efficient and faster as you finish your work. The people around you will soon become under the same pressure as you are as they are afraid to lose out to you due to our students’ competitive nature. This will cause them to undergo peer pressure, by being afraid to lose out to others. For instance, would Usain Bolt exceed his limits and expectations running on a track with competitors around him, trying to push him to his limits or would Usain Bolt exceed expectations and perform better just by running on a track with the stadium empty, devoid of any people? Therefore, one may think that stress is harmful, but it indeed brings some benefits.

However, there are also banes in which stress will harm oneself while leading a stressful life. Indeed there are some who will succumb to pressure, committing suicide in order to be able to escape and getaway from this stressful life, and while no one expects to commit suicide without reason, undue stress can compel one to do the unthinkable and this can happen to anyone who face stress. For instance, one who leads a stressful life and is unable to cope with the amount of stress may think of escaping, as a resort to remove the burden off their shoulders. They have a totally contrasting and different mindset as compared to those who have a competitive nature, as they will never succumb to the thought of committing suicide or other extremist means in order to escape from reality. In true fact, those who are competitive will continue on, constantly trying to get ahead of the others. Therefore, stress has banes too, such as the extreme cases of people committing suicides.

Stress is a double-edged sword, it causes people to be motivated, be it through peer pressure or self-motivation and it also causes the unthinkable to happen, like one committing suicide, through the pressure and burden on their shoulders. One must never be narrow-minded and just consider the banes of stress. Instead, one must be able to understand the true meaning of stress and the ways in order to cope with it, in order to be able to use it effectively and to his own advantage. We can disregard the importance of stress and brush it off as an unnecessary evil visitor in our lives. Yet we can also embrace stress head-on and turn it into motivation for oneself and for others.

I believe in facing stress, then choosing periods of time to avoid it totally. In this way, I can complete my task yet still enjoy the process fully.