Stress Management

*There are some false beliefs about stress that we have acquired: *

*"Stress is natural and has a positive part to play in our present day
lives"*

*Truth: There is no such thing as 'positive stress'. By definition, stress
is unnatural and unhealthy, and is therefore always a negative state. *

*Stress can be defined as a form of pain that comes to tell you there is
something you need to change. Pain - any pain - is a messenger saying there
is something you need to learn. *

*While some people rightly differentiate pain from suffering, where pain is
physical and suffering is mental or emotional, but the term pain can be used
for both.*

*If you put your hand in the fire, what do you experience? Pain. What do you
learn? Not to do it again. You listened to the messenger, you learned and
you changed. We can experience stress or pain at four levels - spiritual,
mental, emotional and physical. When the messenger comes at the mental or
emotional levels, with painful thoughts and negative feelings created by no
one but ourselves, do we listen to the messenger? No we don't, we shoot the
messenger down. Why? Because we have been taught to believe that some stress
is necessary and good. 'They' told us it is normal, and we believed 'them'.
And so we allow stress to develop within ourselves, not realizing we are
creating our own slow death. One reason why the developed world's medical
services are having such a tough time is because more and more of us are
taking less and less responsibility for our own mental and emotional
well-being. No one told us that a single negative thought could have a
devastating effect on our immune system. * Truth: The second reason why we feel that stress is normal and don’t learn
and change is that we have grown to like a 'dose' of fear and a 'quick shot
(injection)' of anger. Why? Because these emotions stimulate the production
of certain addictive chemicals in our bodies. Many people cannot get through
their day without their 'adrenaline dose'. So we go looking for bad
situations, for confrontational people, for reasons to become angry, and if
we don't get our dose then it feels like something is missing from our day.

To say that stress is normal, that a bit of stress is good, is a neat way of
avoiding the inner work of self-responsibility and a sign of lazy thinking.
We all learn to think lazily, it is largely an unfortunate consequence of
our education (or lack of education) so most of us learn to believe that
some stress is good. One thing is for sure, an increasing number of people
are waking up to the reality that stress has no part in a fulfilling life
and they are doing something about it at the level of their thoughts and
feelings.