Dear LPG, 

Here is a question.  Are you stressed?

I think that most pensioners would agree that there is no way that you can get to retirement age without experiencing a few really stressful episodes in life even if like me, after such events, you looked back and wondered why you were so worried about it all in the first place.

According to what I have read online, stress is one of the major symptoms of hypertension and, let’s face it, adjusting to being retired can cause enough of that to be going on with, but I also read that we all need a certain amount of stress in our lives. 

I can remember the stress I felt on the first day I ever went to work as if it happened yesterday and having taken a look at the internet I found a list of top-rated stress factors.  I suspect that most readers will agree that it is pretty hard to get to the end of your working life without having experienced at least some of the stress-related situations that are listed as the worst we can go through.  I also found a list of the top ten post-retirement stress situations that we are likely to face, and I am sure that, like me, many LPG readers can relate to those too.

But do you find that, looking back on your life and the consequences as a result of all that stress, you now wonder why you were so worried at the time?

The point of my sending my message is to tell that I have found some positive stress-related news.  The internet tells us that we would have problems living without some stress in our lives and there is good stress as well as bad?

I found quite a lot of information on the subject, although reading through some of what I found went just far enough over my head to be a little stressful in itself.  Apparently our minds need to be challenged if we want to keep them working to optimum capacity and a little good stress is the way to achieve that balance.

So, in the hope of stressing my fellow readers out just enough to create a healthy mind-balancing result, I have left a few pieces of information that might help sort out which kind of stress to acknowledge and which to mentally throw away… 

SF, Forest Hill.

SF shares the pre and post retirement stress top-ten…

(►►►)   (►►►)

… and a few explanations about good stress and bad stress some of which might make challenging reading… 

(►►►)   (►►►)     (►►►)    (►►►)    

(►►►)    (►►►)    (►►►) 

 (►►►)    

…and LPG adds some information on this celebration…

(►►►)   (►►►)