Sympathy and Parasympathy

I've been thinking about stress. I have a tendency to get stressed pretty easily, and also to neglect behaviour that would do me good.  I procrastinate, apparantly below optimal stress, and then have to focus a lot of energy in not enough time to finish as I'd wish to.  The sympathetic nervous system (as I understand it) is set up to help you run up your energy system, to increase the activation. Part of how it works is to see elevated excitement and elevate it further.  I imagine this is the reason I can't do any strenuous exercise for a couple of hours after receiving a shot of allergens as part of my desensitisation: while my body damped down a stress reaction to a sudden invasion, if it noted that I also had a higher core temp and sharply increasing metabolic rate, I might go into anaphylaxis.

The parasympathetic system has the damping-down power.  It keeps your powder dry.  I think it is responsible for 'cool' in people, and why we like to be around them.  As long as we're awake, we're stressing ourselves and keeping alert.  The cool are doing it a little easier, have a fair bit more in reserve.

I would like to be cooler, to run smoother. What is good for this?  Exercise above 30% of VO2 Max sets off some parasympathetic systems, apparently.  Meditation and yoga-style exercise both seem to help.  Cutting out stressors in diet and lifestyle (coffee, alarm clocks, low-nutrition foods incl alcohol) are all indicated.

Beyond this though, I think there are practices, disciplines which need to become second nature, to be part of how we live.  I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger in his vanity pic 'Pumping Iron' saying:

'If someone steals my car right now, from out front, I can't be bothered with that.  It's insured, I'll call the police, but it's gone now and I've got a competition coming up.'

and also:

'In a way it was sad, you know my mother rang me from Austria and said 'Arnold, you must come home, your father has died.'  The competition was in only six weeks!  I said 'I can't do it, the competition is only six weeks, I can't take any time off. He's dead now, anyway. I'll come see you when I've finished.'

In a way, it is sad.  But it is Resolution: its the ability to say 'This matters more than that - I'm not going to tear myself apart on a dilemma.'  This is something more to learn.