Dealing with Stress

I have posted on stress before, but I cannot stress (pardon the pun) enough that stress is a killer.

Perhaps the most pervasive and difficult problem to solve in life balancing is that of stress. Whether you are at work or at home, there is likely some stress in your life, and that stress can interfere with your enjoyment of your career and your social life.

Stress is what we experience when we must adjust to the constant and conflicting demands of our lives. If you like your job and work long hours, if you are very competitive and always trying to win, you may experience a more positive form of stress.

But for most of us, when we experience unremitting stress, and we don’t know how to handle it, it makes us angry, frustrated, irritable, depressed and fatigued. We may get headaches or develop an ulcer, or perhaps we suffer from insomnia. Unless we can learn to eliminate or mitigate stress, we will function poorly on the job, at home and with friends.

Recognize that stress is real and that it can affect your health, your happiness and your relationships. There are lots of ways to defeat stress, and you’ll need to find the right one for yourself.

Here are some links that will get you started:

www.mindtools.com/smpage.html

www.psychwww.com/mtsite/smpage.html

www.hyperstress.com/

www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/DE7269.html

There are any number of other sites that focus on stress, many of them sponsored by universities and containing some great information and ideas about specific types of stress and stressful events.

Depending on where most of your stress is, you may want to focus in a different area.

If your boss is a major stressor in your life, if there is abuse or a hostile environment at work, you have a different problem than the stress that comes from caring for an ailing parent, spouse or child or the stress that comes from financial troubles.

But, regardless of the cause of your stress, the effects are the same. Extreme stress can be short-lived, as in stress after the death of a loved one, or it can be long-term.

You may ask how and why stress figures into your work/life balance goals.

It is very simple. Whether you are trying to balance your time or simply improve the quality of your life, it is important to acknowledge stress and to understand that there IS something called positive stress, and something called negative stress.

Positive stress is the stress you feel when you are planning your daughter’s wedding or when you are about to make an important presentation.

You may be happy about the event and looking forward to the occasion, but that doesn’t mean there is no stress.

That kind of stress is not harmful and can be quite invigorating. But, negative stress IS harmful, especially if it occurs over a long period of time.

Consider on-the-job stress, or stress in a relationship because of poor communication or the absence of focused time spent with a loved one – all of these things can damage your health and the quality of your life.

So, start by identifying the stressors in your life, and looking for the places you feel most stressed.

Then address the source of the stress, if you can. Because, the best way to approach stress is head-on. Later, we’ll talk about how you can relieve and mitigate stress if you are in a situation where you cannot eliminate it altogether.

But first, let’s look at how and when you can take charge and what you can change.

As we said earlier, you have to start by identifying the stressor(s) and taking stock of your reactions to this stress.

Notice the emotional and physical responses you have to stress. Do your muscles tense? Do you get headaches? Do you get nauseous or have stomach pain? Do you get nervous and irritable? Don’t pretend it isn’t an issue. Be objective about your reactions.

Next, figure out what you can change and how you can relieve or eliminate the stress.

Can you take those tasks or situations that cause you the most stress and schedule or spread them out so that you can tackle them when you are prepared and rested, rather than taking them on in a whirlwind with other things going on at the same time?

Can you shorten the time you are exposed to the stress? If your boss is a great stressor in your life, don’t schedule a one-hour meeting with her if you can avoid it. Instead, try stopping by her office to talk briefly, or if you must schedule time, schedule it during times of the day when you are less likely to feel harried.

And keep the meetings short and to the point. Stay on track and don’t get off on tangents that may make the situation more stressful.

If you have times of day or situations where you are under a lot of stress, try to take a break. Walk outside for a few minutes or go to get coffee. Break the pattern and then come back refreshed to finish the task.

If you focus on making changes to avoid the stress – for example, extending timetables to make a project more feasible, or setting more realistic goals – you will hit the problem at its root cause instead of trying to run and catch up all the time.

Try to analyze and alter your reaction to stress. Much of the damage done by stress is not done by the event itself, but instead by your body’s reaction to the event.

Your body and mind perceive danger and react accordingly and everything becomes exaggerated. The danger seems more threatening, the task more daunting, and the outcome more dismal.

Reason with yourself and ask “what is the worse that can happen?” Are you overreacting to the stressor and making your fear and emotional response worse?

Is everything as critical and time-sensitive as you think or are you just overly sensitive to pleasing everyone, all at the same time?

Don’t obsess over the negative factors and predict failure. Stick to the positive and, even if there are issues, focus on the things that worked well and note them.

THEN revisit the places that didn’t work so well, with a more objective eye toward improving the process, and try not to place or take blame. Just be sure to learn from your experience and the next time it will go better.

And remember, everyone makes mistakes!

Whatever you do, don’t go into a project or situation by predicting doom. You will never succeed that way and in the process, you will endure the stress of trying to consider every ‘what if’ and failure in the book.

Learn how to mitigate stress by diffusing it when it happens. When your heart starts to race and your palms get sweaty, take a two-minute time out and try some deep, slow breathing. It will reduce your heart rate and bring your mind back into focus.

Consciously relax the muscles in your shoulders and neck, the muscles around your jaw and in your scalp. Unclench your hands and close your eyes. Just for a moment.

You’ll be glad you took the break and so will your body!

Take care of yourself. Exercise three or four times a week. Cardio-vascular workouts like aerobics, rapid walking or running are great to relieve stress and strengthen your heart and lungs.

Don’t eat fast food. Try to eat a well-balanced diet and avoid stress responses like smoking and drinking. Take frequent breaks. Remember you can still think through problems and get things accomplished while you take a quick walk or go for a glass of water.

You don’t have to be at your desk to get things done!

Maintain supportive friendships and relationships and don’t let them die on the vine. It is this replenishment that will keep you going. Set your own goals and don’t let others force you into situations you don’t like.

You will always have some stress and frustration, but if you know yourself and if you build your reserves to meet these challenges, you will lead a much more balanced life and work stressors will not creep over into your personal life.

What if you’ve done all the right things and you still suffer the effects of stress? What if that stress is not something you can easily change?

Remember, we said that you could always change your reaction to the stress.

But, sometimes, just knowing you have to calm down doesn’t help much.

We mentioned exercise as a way to mitigate stress, but there are a lot of other structured approaches to mental and physical relaxation, from meditation and yoga to biofeedback, and all of these are beneficial.

Pick the one that works for you.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Deep Breathing – Learning to breathe, deep into your abdomen and to slow your body down sounds easy, but it takes a bit of practice.

However, you can do it anywhere. On a bus, train or plane and once you’ve learned it you will wonder how you ever got along without it.

Because the increased oxygenation of your blood brings more clarity to your brain, you will double the benefit by being able to solve problems better, as well!

Biofeedback is a method of relaxation that helps you to control your responses to and change how your body and mind react. Your brain ‘learns’ how to adjust as you use monitoring equipment to track your heart rate, muscle tension, blood pressure, and skin temperature.

Guided Imagery, sounds fu fu I know, but it works. This technique uses affirmations and relaxing images to calm and focus your mind and body, and control your breathing so you are more relaxed.

It is easy to learn and the more you practice the better and faster your brain will response to the cues, putting you into a state of relaxation more quickly every time.

Meditation has become one of the most popular techniques to achieve relaxation. It is not tied to any religious belief, and can be learned alone through self-study or in groups. Meditation changes your brain waves, and alters the response to stress in your mind, your emotions, and your body.

You can start and end your day with a brief meditation, and eventually, you may find it so helpful that you will employ this technique wherever you are, and whenever you feel stress.

Focused Muscle Relaxation teaches the student to tighten and relax groups of muscles in turn until the entire body is in a state of relaxation. It is easy to learn and can be mastered quickly and effectively with good results.

Yoga is an ancient form of exercise that is based on the connection between the muscles and organs in the body, breathing techniques and the combined effects on the mind. The goal of yogic practice is to restore balance to the body and your emotions through postures, stretching and breathing exercises.

Other forms of exercise, like cardio-vascular workouts, running and walking will increase the release of certain ‘good’ chemicals in your brain, thereby relieving stress, frustration and anger and helping you to sleep.

If you suffer from stress-related insomnia, you should consider trying one or more of the solutions we’ve outlined here. It will help you get the sleep you need to function well, and to keep you healthy and balanced.

And in all of this, use music. Neuro Linguistic Programming shows that eventually it will become a trained response that every time you play the music, it will start to relax you as if you were already doing the above activities.

 

For more stress release help Click Here!

Your Balanced Life- Part 3

Keeping the Home Fire Burning

“Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert” ~ Bertie Charles Forbes ~

 

We’ve talked about the work environment and some of the considerations there. Now, it’s time to open the Pandora’s Box and talk about your family situation.

Unless you are starting your career fresh, with no history, you probably have a lot of fence mending to do.

Your family and friends may be very discouraged and disappointed that you haven’t found a way to balance your life and spend more time with them.

If this is the case, you need to talk to your family and your friends and tell them what you have in mind. Tell them that you are going to dedicate yourself to achieving balance in your life and ask them for their opinion.

Remember, that you don’t have to take every suggestion anyone gives you, and make clear that you will do what you feel is best in the end, but you want his or her thoughts on the topic.

Listen carefully and be honest with yourself and with your friends and family about what you can expect to achieve.

Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.

If there are going to be issues on which you must compromise, if you will have to look for another job where you will make less money in order to achieve your goals, be sure they understand that sacrifice, as well.

There should be no surprises. Before you start this discussion, put some thoughts of your own on paper and think through what you can achieve, realistically.

Be prepared to talk to your family and friends and have some idea of how you will execute your plan.

You can change this plan and work with your family to adjust it, but you need to go in with SOME plan or you will face a chaotic mix of accusation, opinion and emotion.

Here are some links to get you started. After you look at these links, you may have other questions and ideas. Keep track of these.

Write them down so that you can address all the issues with your boss and your family.

(note: I actually included clickable links in the last post and some jumped off before finishing reading and had trouble getting back on, so I am not including clickables in this post and suggest that you cut and paste into your browser after you have finished reading this post)

The Center for Work and the Family

http://www.centerforworkandfamily.com/

National Institute of Health

http://wflc.od.nih.gov/

Questia Online Library for Work and Family

http://www.questia.com/library/sociology-and-anthropology/relationships-and-the-family/family/work-and-family.jsp?CRID=work_and_family&OFFID=se1&KEY=work_family&LID=14582939

PBS

http://www.pbs.org/workfamily/

Bella Online

http://www.bellaonline.com/site/workandfamily

If you do your homework online, you’ll find many more links that are useful.

There are sites that specifically target stress at work and many other topic-specific sites to help you deal with your job and your family in a way that makes life easier for the ones you love.

When you come up with some ideas to discuss with your family, be sure you preface your discussion by explaining that you want to change your focus and balance.

Tell them that you know that work has been pulling you away and you want to fix that.

Just knowing that you recognize the problem and want to work on it, will make them feel better.

If you have children, talk to your spouse or significant other before you call a family meeting.

Consider how you want to address this with the kids and remember that children will often take what you say very literally so don’t play fast and loose with your language.

Think carefully about what you want to say and the words you will use and only promise them what you can deliver.

Don’t lead them to think you are quitting your job to stay home with them and play all day – unless you’ve just won the lottery, of course!

It is likely that whatever plan you have to regain some balance in your life will take awhile to execute, so don’t promise that everything will be fixed by tomorrow.

You may have to look for, find and train in a new job.

You may have to cut back on expensive purchases and lifestyle.

Be sure everyone is on board before you pull away from the dock! Make sure the children understand how important this to them and to you and what they will get in return.

You may think that is clear, but depending upon their age, it may not be as clear to them as it is to you and your spouse.

As you make your plans for work/life balance, consider these things:

You may be trading long hours for financial stress, if you are going to take a job for less pay. How will that impact the family and your commitment to this process? Can you find ways to offset some of the impact of this financial decision?

If you are not changing jobs, but you are going to manage your schedule in a different way, how will you change your family schedule to accommodate that?

Can you eat dinner a bit later, so you can eat together as a family?

Can you take the children to an early movie to spend time with them before you take that afternoon shift?

If you and your spouse work different shifts to be home with the children, include time in your plan for the two of you to get together. If you have to make a date to do that, don’t be shy about it.

Can you share a cup of coffee in between shifts? Get up a little earlier? Go to bed a little later? Don’t neglect that most important person in your life.

Whatever your schedule is, find some quiet time for yourself, and quiet time with your family without the TV playing in the background. Eat dinner together or play a game. When you go grocery shopping with the children, take a break and go to the back of the store for a cup of coffee and a doughnut. The kids will appreciate the time with you and it will make the shopping more tolerable. Find time to do something as a family at least once a week. Order a pizza so you don’t have to cook and spend the time playing a board game, or taking a hike. 

Pick an activity that everyone likes and just do it! It sounds corny, but even a few minutes of this kind of activity will give you a lot more balance in your life.

Assuming you have done what you need to do to find more time away from work, or to change jobs, you may think you’ve now completed the transition. But, that is far from the truth.

The fact is that balancing work and family – in short balancing your life – can be a constant challenge.

There are lots of distractions and, that extra time you’ve carved out of your work schedule will not do your friends and family much good if you spend it parked in front of the TV or computer, instead of with the ones you love.

To complete your plan, you’ll need to develop two traits: Self-discipline and awareness.

Most of us suffer from the absence of both of these traits, but if you focus on them and on breaking bad habits that distract you and take you away from what you really want to do, you will be much happier.

First, let’s talk about self-discipline. The absence of this trait is what gets you off track. It is what pulls you to the computer casino game instead of out to the back yard to play a game of catch with your son.

It is what makes you put off those chores and tasks – whether they are home or work related – that then spring full-grown at 8:00 p.m. to remind you that you must complete them before morning.

And you spend another evening in the den or office crunching numbers for bills, or finishing that project you put off, instead of tucking your daughter into bed or visiting with your husband over a glass of wine.

When you catch yourself listening to the news anchor while your wife tries, in vain, to tell you about her day, reach for the remote and turn off the TV.

Self-discipline and breaking old habits go hand in hand. If you’ve gotten used to becoming a vegetable when you get home from work, it won’t matter how much extra time you get with your family.

You will simply fritter it away!

Awareness is also important. Become aware of what you are doing, what you are saying and every time you catch yourself taking things for granted, remember that the little time you have with your family and friends is important and pay attention.

Listen to what your friend, spouse or child is saying to you.

Listen to your father when he calls you on the phone and wants to tell you about the fish he caught. And look for the opportunities to grab a special moment during the chaos of your week. Don’t just slide through life.

Make it happen!

There are two other things you may want to consider in your quest for balance at home. These two things will give you more balance and engender better relationships.

And once you’ve laid the groundwork, they will pretty much manage themselves.

The first consideration is: Rules!

Perhaps you are thinking that you hate rules. Most people do, but they are a necessary evil in life.

Think about it! Laws are nothing more than societal rules that keep the wheels greased and running and prevent chaos.

Rules in your work/life balance will give you and your family structure and, if and when the rules are bent or broken, the exceptions must be carefully explained.

Your family and you must know that you mean business and, only when there are extenuating circumstances, are the rules bent or broken.

But, Rules are never ignored!

Rules apply to when and how the family will get together and to things like whether your child can stay out late on a school night or whether they are expected to attend a family birthday party.

They also apply to YOU as they relate to when you’ll come home from work and whether you will attend the Friday night movie with the family or beg off and say you have to work. How often will you make it to the league soccer game or the lacrosse games?

Rules are for everyone.

A good way to establish these rules is to have the family sit down together and develop the list. Everyone can vote and everyone’s opinion counts. Some rules may be very simple and some may be temporary.

But if you have a set of rules printed or typed on your refrigerator, you and your family will feel more confident in your balance and will know better what to expect in a certain situation.

But, don’t expect the family to obey the rules, if you don’t obey them. You have to keep your end of the bargain too!

The second consideration is: Communication!

To keep your life and the life of your family in balance, you need time and attention. But you also need communication.

Even if your job is demanding, you can balance your life better with your family if you make them part of the equation.

Your job and what you do when you are away from home on business should not be a mystery.

If you have to go out of town, tell the family where you are going, when you will be back and why you are going and use telephone, email and text messaging to keep in touch so they don’t feel like you are on another planet.

If you say you are going to call at a certain time, be sure to do so!

Don’t leave them hanging. Leave silly notes or messages to find while you are away and bring home little gifts.

You don’t have to bring anything expensive – some kids get a kick out of the small ketchup bottles that come with your room service order.

That is easy, and inexpensive and it lets them know you are thinking about them.

If you can have dinner together at night, do so and keep the conversation pleasant. Don’t choose dinnertime to bring up bad grades or that boyfriend you can’t stand.

Your kids will not want to have dinner with you, if you do that.

Make the mealtime conversation pleasant, and keep the distractions out of the dining room. No TV, music or other disruptions.

Family meetings are a great way to keep the lines of communication open and, again, everyone’s opinion counts and everyone gets the floor to say what they need to say.

Keep the meetings constructive and informative and talk about whatever is going on in your lives.

A twenty-minute family meeting will give you a chance to touch base and feel connected and, even if you are working long hours, you will not feel like a stranger in your own home.

Agree on how and when you will communicate throughout the day – even when you are not home. Is your child expected to call you and check in when he gets home from football practice?

Create a mail slot or an ‘in box’ for all the notices from school, permission slips and other items. A mailbox for each person in the family is even better, if you have the room.

Then, you can leave little notes for each other to keep in touch, or just to say hello, or ‘I love you’.

I hope that this mini series has given you some ideas on how to get more balance, free up some time, and remove some stress from your life.

My goal is to provide you with guides that can help you go from surviving to thriving.

If you could please let me know in the comments box, I was wondering, do you prefer the longer posts or the shorter format that I have been using?

Also, I was toying around with maybe moving to the next step and moving to a podcast or Vlog format, would that be something that you would be interested in? Let me know below and as always, here's to your success.

9 Strategies For Regaining Your Work Life Balance

 

I like working with independent professionals and artists because of the way the work life balance shows itself in our lives - for us, life, work, and business exist in a nexus from which we cannot easily extract our ways of loving, relating, and making meaning. The challenges we face in business inform our personal lives and personal challenges affect our businesses.

Rich as it is, the relationship between personal and professional life can be rocky and maintaining that work life balance is often a tricky issue. I experienced this before when, within a few weeks of declaring some new goals for my business, my wife lost her job unexpectedly followed my my daughter needing surgery just a few days later. If this wasn’t bad enough, a job that I was doing on a major client’s personal items messed up due to a material flaw in the product he purchased, but, though it was on him, he decided to discontinue our working relationship. All of these factored together to lead to a personal melt down.

The problem was that I felt like a loser. I enjoyed the work that I did with this client and I couldn’t get out of the funk. Before I knew it, we were looking bankruptcy in the eye and didn’t know what we could do other than give up.

I've been caught between the promptings of my spirit and the requirements of my business more than a few times, and I knew all sorts of success formulas, but none of them seemed to help. I also knew it was possible to take care of ourselves and our businesses if we are willing to do the work, but I couldn’t shake the funk and it led to a deep depression.

We lost our house, one of the cars and had to move to the other side of the state; we had to borrow money from family just to get settled, but my wife had gotten a new job and I was able to reestablish my business in a better location and things finally started getting back to a level that I could see a light.

As Les Brown once said, “When you fall down, always land on your back. That way you can always be looking up no matter how low you fall.”

Here are nine strategies that, taken together, can help to change course without abandoning the destination and help you restore your work life balance:

 

1. Don't panic.

Even if you feel panicky, you can choose modest, recoverable steps to address the situation. This is no time to get a divorce, fire an employee, or buy a new computer system. Tip: Talk with a coach or therapist to get perspective.

 

2. Return to Source.

Whatever your spiritual orientation or tradition, connect with what for you is the Source of life or spirit. Know that there is something larger than you that encompass you. Spend at least 15 minutes each day connecting with that Source. (I like Mark Silver's Remembrance Practice described in his free downloadable workbook Getting to the Core of Your Business.)

 

3. Take a body inventory.

Are you sleeping well? How are you eating? What's your energy level? If these are not up to par, get a professional evaluation and take the steps that will restore your well-being.

 

4. Tell the truth.

Sometimes energy flags when we've gotten into a pattern of pleasing others or living according to standards that are not our own. Notice if there is any misbalance. Notice where you're being less than forthright with yourself and get clear about your motives, then clean it up.

 

5. Keep good company.

Are you stimulated and encouraged by your peers and clients? Do you have great playmates? Playing on the wrong playground with the wrong kids is neither fun nor productive.

 

6. Tune Up Your Thinking.

There's substantial evidence that managing the way we think can have a profound and lasting effect on mood and motivation. See Amazon.com for books you can use to tune up your cognitive skills and/or make a date with a therapist. (If you are otherwise in good psychological health a skilled coach can help, too.)

 

7. Set Healthy, Flexible Boundaries.

Yes, real life and real business are intimately connected, but that doesn't mean that you need to give up your privacy. To find your work life balance, set boundaries so that you can feel generous without feeling depleted and available without feeling invaded. Keep them flexible, because things change.

 

8. Create or Refine Systems.

We can't manage real life and a real business without good systems. Look at where things feel most out of sorts and resolve to create or improve a system to get things on track.

 

9. Keep the Goal, Drop the Plan.

Sometimes the best way to achieve a goal is to let go of our plans. Promptly and clearly revise commitments and offers as necessary to bring current activity in line with current resources. Why abandon ship when you can drop anchor while you make some repairs?

For me, these strategies led me to go past what I was doing and concentrate on this dream that I had to help others get out of the rat race and make a legacy that the future will benefit from. Having stopped the war between myself and my business and realizing that there was more to me than my work, I was able to restore my work life balance and now feel more engaged with the things that I choose to take on (like writing this blog and creating a training program.) My goals have went from safe to audacious and are now shining possibilities instead of looming obligations, and if it takes a little longer to reach them, arriving will be all the sweeter.

In 2016, make it a goal to balance your life.

 

 

9 Secrets For Stress-Free Living

 

Stress-free living is not totally unattainable. As discussed in a previous article, some stress is good. In this article I am speaking about the bad stressors and I’ll give you some tips on how you how you can emotionally de-clutter your life and magnetically pull the things you want closer. So lets get started.

 

1) Accept the problem

You have to accept the situation to fully acknowledge it, you have to accept yourself where you are, no matter what - you cannot solve any problem without first accepting it, and yourself. We spend so much of our time trying to deny what it is that is causing us the stress, pushing it away, which only leads to more of the problem appearing in our lives. Very often simply acknowledging the stressor and accepting that we had a part to play in that stressor coming into our life is enough to see it for what it is, a situation that can be solved.

 

2) Appreciate the Stressor

I know, it sounds weird, but after acknowledging the stressor and seeing it for what it truly is, you can learn to appreciate the situation. Life is about learning. When you see the stressor for what it is worth, you start working out a way to eliminate that stress from your life. One of the fastest ways to attract harmony into your life is by learning to appreciate the good in whatever situation it is that life is presenting you with. Appreciation is the antidote to some of the lowest forms of emotions we are capable of e.g. shame, resentment, etc. By offering thanks to God for the lessons learned, you immediately begin to attract more of it towards you. Also, by appreciating the stressors, you don’t allow negativity about the stressors to depress you.

 

3) Happiness in the Struggle

The experience of working through a stressful situation brings joy when you overcome the situation. Why not start feeling that before the stressful situation is taken care of. Take on the attitude that you know the situation is almost over. Take pride in the small victories that get you closer to eliminating the stressors in your life. Focus your life on having more now-moment pleasure experiences, rather than accumulating reasons or things to be happy about. Life on this planet is short enough without wasting time worrying about future outcomes when it is just as easy to appreciate where you are now. No matter how many stress factors are in your life, there are always more that you could be having, always someone worse off than you, and always a way out of the situation that you are in, so be happy in knowing you are in a place to accomplish much.

 

4) Stay connected to God

Find your own personal way to stay connected to Jesus.  For many, this is prayer, music, song, etc. Get back to nature, memorize a verse a day, whatever it takes to keep you connected to the source of your salvation. Burn out happens way too often, because we give and give and give, while not allowing ourselves the opportunity to just be fed. The Lord of Peace gives us what we need to work through any stress factors that we have. Through Him we have awareness that we are part of a much greater purpose, something else, something higher than ourselves that makes our current circumstances trivial by comparison. Notice that the concepts are so connected even on a linguistic level. People are attracted to God because we recognize that’s where we want to be, we want to have those feelings, we want to experience that energy, because the energy, just by being in His presence, makes us feel better about ourselves.

 

5) Live in the moment

We only have access to our full personal power in the present moment. The extent, to which you are connecting, on some unconscious level, either into the past or into the future, is the extent to which you rob yourself of your present power. You are not going to be experiencing what it is that God wants for you; therefore you are moving your emotional point of attraction, into negative territory. Being in the present moment is the only way you can make an emotional connection to what it is that will get you past your current stressor. This type of emotional alignment cannot be achieved when your thoughts are in the future or past. Living with your thoughts at a future or past moment in time (a.k.a worrying too much on the past or the future), is entirely redundant in the process of being free of stress.

 

6) You can never be enough

You can never be sorry enough to change the situation. You can never give enough to make up for the past; you can never sock away enough to really secure your future. It is only when you allow yourself to give it over to God that you can see the present for what it is, a gift. It is only when you are allowing the yourself to see current stressors for what they really are, that you have the ability to gift it to others. Help others see stress for what it is. When your cup is not already brimming over, it is the fastest route to the emotional poorhouse. Others easily see through empty gestures, compliments, or favors; and, such gestures only blind you from your own emotional misinterpretations of your own stress. They are not useful, and serve no purpose in enhancing your life or others’.

 

7) Be selfish enough to line up with your intentions

This is important because it is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer others. If your own energy tank is not full, you have no business looking after the tanks of others. It is important to limit your own responsibilities to prevent emotions draining of self-worth etc. Remain present and in attendance to your own needs first and you will always give others your best, automatically.

 

8) You are not your accomplishments

Understand that you are not your accomplishments, what you do, what you don’t do, your beliefs, your ideas, your stuff or possessions, those are nothing to do with who you really are, they are the baggage you have picked up along the way, so stop placing so much worry in these things. They are nothing to do with the spiritual you who wants to feel good; and stay connected to Peace. Lose your ego, and take this attitude of freedom with you in your everyday life.

 

9) The journey is the destination

Many times our internal dialogue says “If only I had x, then I would be happy, or, “I’ll be happy when I’ve got…” As you go into the world and experience the contrast of your likes vs. your dislikes, through your everyday experiences, so a new want is born. Being able to see stress in the here and now makes you realize that the journey is the destination. Each day is another opportunity to walk with God and let Him help handle your stress. So enjoy the journey and don’t stress on the destination because we already know where we are going.

 

Bringing it all together

So how do we overcome the various stress blocks to pull greater peace and abundance towards us? Live in the present and take stress one day at a time, never give them more power than they really have.

 

If you have gotten anything from this series on stress or have anything to add, I would love to hear from you.