BUT ITS TOO HARD TO CHANGE THINGS!

An earlier post was entitled : "Is it easier to keep suffering stress? '

Its true that sometimes, its too hard to make a change: it requires real effort to do something different.

Maybe we feel we do not have time to spend thinking and making some changes.

Maybe we are frightened to make any change: its threatening. We don't know what may happen.

Maybe we don't want to upset things, to rock the boat.

Maybe its easier just to take some pills.  Then we rely on pills for our peace. Wise move??  No!

So if that the case, we will continue to get what we always got :  continued stress.

Think about it: if you want less stress in your life, who is going to do it for you?  Only YOU - by taking some action.

The whole world and our body change every day: when you look at it, change is part of life.

Maybe we should try to get used to the idea of CHANGE - then think about our lives.

Have a look at the HELP PAGES for some ideas.

ACCEPTING THE PAST

Further to the previous post about GUILT ....

Carl Jung once said, "If one can accept one's sin, one can live with it. If one cannot accept it, one has to suffer the inevitable consequences." 

This means that if we do not accept our wrong past actions, they will continue to haunt us.

Sometimes we just have to accept the fact that we did wrong.

Then we can forgive ourselves: we are only human and we sometimes make mistakes.

So if you feel bad about something you have done, try the above. Really, your guilty feelings will do no good to anyone, and only damage own peace of mind.

Which will add to the load of stress you already have.

Perhaps this is one of the simplest things you can do to reduce your stress.

Can you forgive yourself?

GUILT

Do you feel GUILTY because of something you may have done, or not done?

Feeling guilty almost ensures that you will feel tense, probably without knowing it, and hence add to your stress load.

Guilt is one of the most common negative feelings we all have and can make us feel burdened down and perhaps even unworthy. It can drag us down emotionally. It will add to the stress you already have.

Yet guilt does nothing for anyone: just feeling guilty does not help the person or situation involved - does it?

Guilt is just another burden we carry around - unless we decide to get rid of it.

Here are a few ideas about getting rid of guilty feelings:

• Confess to yourself that what you did was wrong. Own up to your mistake(s).
  
• Realise that you are not perfect: you are a human being and you make mistakes - and sometimes your mistakes or bad deeds hurt someone. We all do the wrong thing at times - we're human.
  
• Having identified something you are not proud of, you can say to yourself: "I made a mistake then, doing whatever it was, but today, NOW, I would not do that again. I have changed for the better."
  
• Perhaps you can try to make amends to whoever you injured. 
• Maybe that is no longer possible, if so try writing that person a letter of apology. Then tear it up.
• Maybe you can do something for the person involved: a good turn, especially if they will not know about it, that it was from you. You will feel better: you've made amends.
• Maybe you can front up and talk to the person: they may have forgotten or not even realise that you injured them (was it only in your mind?). Or maybe you can just apologise.
• If it's not possible to contact the person involved, maybe you can visualise the person being in front of you, and apologise to them. Say it out loud: verbalising your thought makes it more powerful in removing your sense of guilt.

This is another way of reducing stress in your life: lighten your load! Give it some thought.

And learn to be kind to yourself: after all, aren't YOU your best friend??

GOTTA KEEP BUSY !!

One way some of us add stress to ourselves is keeping  very busy doing stuff so that we don't have time to think about what hurts us.  It's sort of an escape.

Why do we do this?

Because: it's hard to address or face what is hurting us.  That is real hard - we don't want that pain back.

It is easier to just keep our minds busy so that we cannot think about it, nor feel it.

But it's a viscous circle: sooner or later those repressed feelings of hurt will bubble up and make us feel bad.

I sometimes think these repressed hurts resurface every ten years or so, but whatever the time frame is, they will come back.  By ignoring them, they do not go away.

And, when there is something inside of us simmering away, it can make us tense without even knowing it.

What does this mean? 

If we want inner peace to come, one day we will have to start facing those buried feelings of hurt, and deal with them once and for all.

Authors such as Eckhardt Tolle and Petrea King have specifically addressed the handling of those things that hurt us, often from long ago.

Maybe if this sounds like you, some research may be a good start.

FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness as a way to reduce stress?  Really?

Why is forgiveness so important?

Because when we hold grudges, resentment, bitterness or anger against someone or something, all we are doing is adding stress to our body.  We are only harming ourselves.

Probably you know that your grudge doesn't really matter to the person or thing causing our anger: they would consider that our problem, not theirs.

It's commonly recognised now that anger or resentment held in our bodies for long enough will cause harm to our physiology: it can make us sick. What's the point of that? The cause of our anger is totally unaffected.

And sometimes, we have to learn to forgive: OURSELVES. Yes, ourselves: for the silly or harmful things we have done; for the mistakes we've made; the things we did not do; the things we did; all of the things we regret in our life.

This is the way to inner peace: forgiveness cancels the poison of anger, resentment and bitterness we hold.

This is not easy, but an important step in reducing the stress in our lives.

I hope that you start to think about the anger or resentments you hold against someone or something or even yourself.  Is there any latent anger in you? Why do you feel that way?

I hope you do some further reading on letting go of anger and resentments: it's important for our health.

Let me know what you think!

WHEN DO I NEED HELP?

Sometimes we find ourselves living with so much in-built tension or stress that we begin to think it is normal to feel that way,

At one time in my life I took action to remove myself from a source of stress.  After a couple of weeks I suddenly found that my stomach muscles were relaxed.  Only then did I realise that for years I had been so uptight my stomach muscles were always tight - suddenly I was relaxed and had some inner peace.

It may be worth while taking stock of one's inner peace level - or lack of it - and thinking about maybe doing something to reduce any inner tensions.

What are some of the warning signs of too much stress load on the body?  Here are a few:

• As above, tight tummy muscles
• Digestion or elimination issues
• Heart palpitations
• Sweaty hands most of the time
• Headaches, including migraines
• Hearing your heartbeats thumping in your ear
• A nervous tick below either eye

As we said, these things can creep up on one and we don't really notice.  Taking stock of how you feel at one particular moment may show that you have some of the above symptoms.

If you have, maybe it's time to think about changing something.  The 'Help Pages' contain some ideas in this regard: I recommend them to you and hope you find there something that helps you.

CARRYING A GRUDGE

Sometimes in life we get resentful toward some person or situation.  It seems natural to say something like: "Well! No way I will forgive him/her/it for that!"

What this does is turn on a little corner of tension way inside of us, a little bit of anger. After all, it DID hurt at the time when the event happened.  Why should we even think about forgiving whatever it was?

These little bits of tension add to any stress that our body is handling: our body has a bit more to cope with, besides keeping us healthy, digesting our food, running all of our operating systems.

These tensions we hold tend to make our muscles tense and this takes energy: the more stressful we become the more energy we may burn up.

We also now accept that inner tensions reduce the effectiveness of our immune system: that's why we seem to pick up colds and stuff when we are under stress all the time.

The answer to holding a grudge is to FORGIVE the person or thing that caused out hurt.  This is a low cost, natural way to reduce unnecessary stress in our lives.

We do not forgive for the other person: we forgive for our own inner peace.

Think about this if you find yourself mentally composing nasty letters to someone because you were hurt in some way.

Try it.  It will help.

TENSION BREAKERS

Sometimes we are in situations where we just have to carry on despite feeling stressed.

Is there anything we can do to help us at these times?

Yes there is.

Most 'tension relievers' revolve around some from of simple meditation.

Here are a few ways to break out of your tense feelings -

• First try to get to a quiet place on your own (even the toilet may have to do!)
• Try to concentrate on your breathing: just feel the air going into your body and then flowing out again - you can start to breathe more deeply as this will enhance your awareness. Keep this up for a few minutes and hopefully you should start to feel more calm.
• Try thinking about your very favourite place or event that meant something to you: try to feel the feelings you had then. President Harry S. Truman used to get his phone calls stopped and then, as he said, "Go into his mental foxhole and think about his lake fishing spot". Just a few minutes of this will break the tension.
• Go for a walk if you can - briskly, don't just dawdle - and often the physical activity will drain away the stress.

A few don'ts - these DO NOT HELP in the long run:

• Take a drink of alcohol - you can start to depend on grog too often.
• Light up a cigarette - won't make you healthier in the long term
• Get into an argument - this may let your tension out, at the cost of the feelings of your workmates, loved ones or friends.

Why not try something FREE and HEALTHY?  Why not let me know how you go by making a comment?

Until next time, love yourself - you are valuable to all of us.