Are We Really Stressed Or Did We Imagine It?

Most of us know that we all need some levels of stress in life, this is called the healthy stress levels. It helps to push us to peak performance. BUT too much of it, and there is a very thin line, it pushes into the bad stress area.

All of us, are all too familiar with the experience of stress. The thing is stress can easily be managed, if we understand it.

For example, when we have a long to-do list, we may immediately experience stress because we are thinking of the amount of work that needs to be done. So my question to you is: is the thought of doing the work, or the actual doing of the work causing you stress?

If you ponder upon this, you will realise that it is the thought of it that is causing the stress.

Personally, I love to do lists, and this is what I do on a daily basis, to make sure that tasks are done and completed at the end of the day. Looking at the list no longer make me sweat because I have come to realise that the actual doing of the work is pretty easy and sometimes mechanical (depending on what kind of tasks and especially for tasks that are familiar and and repetitive). Some of the tasks can be performed as a form of meditation even.

It is the thinking of the to do lists, and the imagined stress that is causing the actual stress! Isn't that interesting? In other words, we have worked ourselves up into a frenzy.

We imagine the worst, we imagine how things could go wrong, we imagine how we may make someone angry, we imagine losing a client, and so on. And we say we have no imagination.

So with these, our stress levels go up and we most probably fall into the bad stress area -- we start to experience low energy, headaches, upset stomach (diarrhea, constipation etc), aches and pains, chest pain and heart palpitations, insomnia, frequent colds and infections, loss of sexual desire or ability.

Are you feeling stressed just by reading the above list?

We are so powerful in causing ourselves pain. BUT the good news is, we are equally powerful in causing ourselves joy, happiness and peace. It is a conscious choice we have to make but it does not happen automatically.

The method is simple to do, but it may be challenging at the beginning because we have lived a certain way for so long, re-learning is the challenge.

The simple method is this: When you think about your to-do lists, do not engage your emotions into it if you have trouble experiencing joy from the list. Simply look at the list as if you are watching the waves on the beach. And then go about doing what needs to be done -- one at a time. Any time you feel the stress levels go up because you are starting to think about how much you need to do, or that it is unfair you are doing all these, or whatever negative thoughts that are not helpful surface, focus on your breathing and drink lots of water!

Now, there are also other types of stress -- the type that has been embedded within our psyche from our childhood. It could be a bad experience, childhood trauma or even stress experienced by our care givers that we have absorbed into our own system. These type of stress has to be dealt with in therapy. The long term effect, mixed with our own imagined stress from modern living can turn the stress into high levels of toxicity and then manifesting itself as diseases. This is an entirely different topic but I thought I should acknowledge that this level of stress is real. Perhaps we will explore more of this at a later time.

So deep breathing and drinking water are the two easiest things to do. Do not under estimate the positive impact they have on us, physically, emotionally, mentally and also spiritually.

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