We all deal with stress on a day-to-day basis. Stress is a normal function of the brain showing that it’s working all day long to solve different problems that may arise moment to moment. Some stresses are emotional, some intellectual, it’s all different and to different degrees. But that’s another issue all together. Right now, let’s address the impact of delaying or skipping stressful issues for long periods of time, which is actually impossible.

Stress can become a huge problem when not addressed

I recently set a goal to finish reading some books on computer science; tough subjects like algorithm complexity and data structures. Yeah, really tough stuff that required a lot of my attention and dedication.

I found no matter how focused I was, many of the things I was reading required several read throughs to understand. I figured that was normal since computer science is a difficult subject, but I soon figured out there was more to it; something to do with my internal state rather than the external task at hand.

So, at my next stint at a coffee shop, before going back to study those tough concepts, I did a bit of self-reflection and discovered my inability to receive what I was reading was caused by “background” stress running in the subconscious part of my mind. It was stress that I was not directly addressing or even attempting to dedicate time towards solving.

This happens to all of us and for different reasons. Mine happened to be related to fear. Fear of admitting that the reason for my stress might be me. As humans, we tend to hide from facing a problem when the cause of that problem is connected to “me” directly. The same goes when we don’t deal with stress!

Stress is good when it’s not hibernated!

There is an important implication here: our brains function like computers with one huge distinction: our brains never shut down! The “processes” keep running in the back of our minds.

This is comparable to when we use applications on our laptops and then put the computer to sleep by just closing the laptop, only to open it later and find the processes still going on in the background. It is called hibernation or put to sleep.

But unlike computers, the human brain can’t be shut down even while we sleep.

When we sleep, background processes are still going on; the same goes for unresolved stress. It’s still processing in the background and accumulating. This is important because unresolved, accumulated stress can consume a lot of our thinking power. After spending some time reflecting deeply over where my stress was coming from and observing the emotions that resulted, I was able to dissolve the negative energy and trapped thoughts and free up my thinking power.

Optimize your brainpower by dealing with background stress

I found out my stress was related to feelings I had toward some past events and people that my brain was still thinking about subconsciously—like a program you don’t use but still runs without ever ending.

It happens all the time, the only thing is that we often fail to notice the stress running in the background, much like not paying attention to applications that are still open on our computers. They don’t pose any immediate problem so why bother closing them?

It was a very deep realization and I was able to notice within me the energy and feelings being cleansed. That short process of deep reflection and meditation had a huge impact on my ability to focus on my studies. The length of the focus time was the same, but the depth of understanding was different. The result was that all of my brain capacity could focus completely on processing the information being read.

Monitor your background stress

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that you should stop whatever task you’re doing to solve all the stress accumulated in your life in one go. That would simply not work since stress is a part of our daily life and absorbed in different quantities all the time. The important thing to do is to not let the stress process run for too long in the background without dealing with it. It’s draining and wasteful of the capacity our brains have.

One practical solution I am now taking is to dedicate a special time every day to check myself. There are a lot of options on the how to do this: meditation, keeping a journal tracking your state of wellbeing, or just simply taking 10 minutes for deep self-reflection.

We tend to get very busy and use much of our time scrolling through Facebook feeds or just browsing the net on our mobile phones, and we forget to dedicate time to focus internally on what is going on in the background of our subconscious.

Next time you’re reading or watching something, or listening to someone, but feel unable to fully focus, take it as a good sign you’ve got unresolved accumulated stress taking up space in the back of your brain. Do yourself the great favor of dedicating some time to process that stress and give yourself some closure.