Manage Your Thoughts, manage Your Stress

In today's world it seems that everyone is suffering stress overload. We now have many labor saving devices that allow us to accomplish more and do it all faster which means we are expected to accomplish three times the work expected 20 years ago. A business loses a staff person and instead of replacing that person, the other staff pick up the extra work. Women work outside the home and then return home and have another full time job waiting for them. Not to mention the stress of being in a relationship or trying to find a relationship or trying to become "self actualized". By self actualized I am referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and how he refers to the process of becoming the best that we can be.
Entire books have been devoted to the issue of managing stress so it is a little difficult to do the subject justice in one short article. But possibly a place to begin improving our stress management skills might be with reframing the issue and putting it in proper perspective. Start with the questions: "Is this problem life threatening"? Is this problem something that I am even going to remember a week from now? A month from now? A year from now? Will I be able to laugh about this next week? Next year?

Stress is actually our physical response to the perception of a threat rather than the actual event. Our heart beats faster, maybe we begin to perspire. Our body kicks into the "fight or flight" response. It is our thinking about the event that creates the stress and not the event itself. If we see the shadow of a person in our kitchen in the middle of the night and we recognize them as a family member, we are not afraid. But if we do not recognize them, even if it is someone we know, we will be afraid and stressed. Stress is subjective. What one person may perceive as stress another person may find exciting or interesting or merely annoying. If we tend to be a pessimist by nature, everything is going to be more stressful than if we are an optimist by nature. So step one of stress management may be to examine our thinking. Are we a cup half full or a cup half empty person? Do we always imagine the worst result to any event? Is our self talk negative? Are we always telling ourselves that we will not be able to cope? Maybe we need to examine these thoughts more closely to see if our thoughts and self talk are really fact or just our imagination? Again, the questions in the paragraph above may help us put things in better perspective.

Another helpful stress management skill is to take a time out and actually list our stresses. Examine them one at a time. Exactly what is it about each situation that is causing us to feel stress? Is the stress because of a feeling of fear? Exactly what do we fear? What is the worse case scenario and how likely is that? Is it a lack of control that we are feeling? Or is it a need that is not being met? Exactly what would you like to see changed? Do you want the entire situation to go away or just a small part of it? Is it a lack of assertiveness on your part that allows the situation to occur and/or to be stressful? Does your stress often occur because of poor organization or poor time management skills? Are you taking things too seriously and maybe need to lighten up and see the humor in the situation? Brainstorm ideas for ways that you could impact on each stressor. Is there something about the situation you have the power to change? If you have no control over the situation, can you just accept it and not allow yourself to become upset? Can you mentally examine the situation and realize that it is not really threatening or important and if you ignore it you will not even remember it a month from now, or a year from now. Or can you avoid the situation (remove yourself from the situation) or part of the situation entirely?

After answering the questions above for each of your major stressors, the next step is to determine if maybe what you need is a focused approach to becoming more assertive, or more organized, or improving your time management skills. Often stress results from the lack of these particular skills.

Develop a mindset of resilience. No matter what, you are a survivor. Sometimes an event that seems terrible at the time (for instance, we lose our job) actually is an opportunity in disguise. Remember the saying, when one door closes, another door opens. Develop an internal locus of control. You have significant control over your life, not 100% but a large percent. You are not a victim or at the mercy of fate or the environment. We may not be able to control an event or a circumstance but we can control our response to that event or circumstance. The law of attraction points out that what we focus our thoughts on is what we are inviting into our life. So focus your thoughts positively and realize that you have the ability to cope with any problems that occur during the course of your life. Just being aware of your own power and resilience goes a long way toward managing stress.