Strategies To Manage Stress

Life for almost everyone is a series of stressful events, hopefully, interspersed with periods of abatement and recovery. However, many people are operating their day to day lives under a continuous current of tension that seems to never leave them.

Cumulative stress can stem from conditions such as relationship issues, financial woes or job-related problems. This can be compounded by self-image and self-worth issues. Whether your stress is chronic or acute, the good news is that there are proven healthy ways to cope with the symptoms.

How many times have you heard the following...

Define and Express Your Stress

Precisely defining and expressing your anxieties and feelings can immediately help you begin to release the problem. Confiding in a good friend or close family member is always an option.

If talking about what is bothering you isn't your style, what about writing it down? Many people find writing a poem or a song to be extremely cathartic.

Perhaps you are having a personal issue with someone. Another method is to write them a letter expressing your feelings.

Get everything down and don't worry about grammar or hurting their feelings. The exercise is to simply vent as though they will read the letter but you actually never give it to them.

Keep a journal on a daily or weekly basis

It is very beneficial for many people. This method also gives you the opportunity to reflect upon other entries and see how you dealt with similar issues in the past. It is a good way to keep track of what problem-solving methods seemed most effective.

Tame Your Tension

Finding a positive way to release the tension from your system will help you let go before it has a chance to chronically impact your cells, tissues, and muscles. Spending time with people who make you laugh and feel great is always a good option.

Spending less time with negative and irritating people is just as wise. When was the last time you read a joke book? Watching funny movies can be a temporary pick-me-up and sometimes, that is all you need to clear your head and be able to look at your stressful situation with a fresh pair of eyes.

Find A New Hobby

Engaging in a new hobby can be a great way to relieve stress. By taking some time for yourself and learning a new skill, your focus can change and you may additionally meet a new diverse group of people. Spending time volunteering for something you feel passionate about, spending time with animals and getting back to nature are all great ways to alleviate stress.

The Pros and the Cons

Let's be honest: even though you realize that stress is potentially dangerous - even life-threatening in high doses - you probably see some benefits. Maybe it feels like high levels of stress keep you motivated to achieve at a high level at work or school.

Do you worry that your work would suffer? Do you feel it's useful for you to assume the worst (awfulizing) in situations so that you'll always be prepared for the worst case?

Your efforts to make changes will succeed only when you realize that your reasons for changing outweigh your reasons for not changing. It's that simple.

While these techniques might work for some people, most of my clients are dealing with chronic stress which means they need more intense help.

Over the past 11 years, I've realized that people need specific strategies to help with their problems. Everyone is unique and require personal and unique answers to their problems.

After all: when you lower your stress, you raise your quality of life!

https://ezinearticles.com/?Strategies-To-Manage-Stress&id=9884488

Sick of Waiting? 4 Reasons Why You Can’t Manifest

You’re doing everything right…you couldn’t have made your intentions any clearer to the universe. You now consider yourself to be the poster boy/girl of positivity.

So what’s gone wrong?

When you feel you’ve put in all the work, and to no avail, it’s no wonder you’re left feeling discouraged. Here are the four most common reasons for when manifesting fails, to learn from, for greater manifesting success.

1) Stop Resisting

Fear is the biggest form of resistance. When you’re still holding onto some form of fear, whether it’s a fear of not having enough income, of not being good enough or that things won’t work out the way you’d hoped – you’re essentially building a brick wall between yourself and what you want most.

When you’re in a place of fear, your energies are negative ones. You’re emitting a frequency of lack, you’re trying to force things – and the universe will respond to this.

So, if you believed that you’d already cleared your negative energies but are yet to see the results you’d like, it’s time to dig a little deeper. How might you be standing in your own way? Is your mind stuck in the negative experiences of the past? Or is it always racing ahead of you, filled with anxieties for the future? If either are true for you, then you need to release these fears and learn how to be content in the present moment.

Remember – fear only exists in the mind and life is only what you make it. So make it positive.

2) Clear Out the Clutter

How do you expect to welcome positive changes into your life, when you’re still focusing on the negatives that are already there? Your mind is like a garden – when you want the flowers to grow, first you’ve got to pull out the weeds.

This ‘clutter’ can be found in many forms. Whether it’s a limiting belief you’ve held onto since childhood or the anger you’re still harboring towards an old friend, this emotional baggage will be consuming your energies.

You want to work towards raising your energies to become a vibrational match with the things you want to achieve. This requires stripping away any thought patters, behaviors or deep-rooted feelings that don’t support this.

So the next time you manifest an unwanted experience, rather than looking at it as a setback, use it as a learning opportunity. Ask yourself, how have you helped to co-create this experience with the universe? You then have the chance to resolve any limiting beliefs or negative thought patterns that come up…bringing you one step closer to your dream.

3) Trust the Universe

When you’re *this* close to achieving your dreams, doubt can begin to creep in. However, until you learn to overcome this and to have complete faith in the universe to deliver what you want, your dreams may remain just that.

Understandably, this sounds much easier said than it is done. After all, when you want something really badly, it’s difficult to keep your cool about things. What if it doesn’t come? What if it’s not what you’d expected? What if you’re not ready?

However, it is important to remember that nothing is about to manifest physically until it exists in the mind first. So hard as it is, relax, and trust the universe to do what it does best – listen to you.

4) Get in the Flow

You’ve stated your goals to the universe, you’ve worked to remove any resistance you’ve been harboring and have complete faith in the universe to bring you what you want most. So now it’s time to step out of your own way, and to let the universe do what it needs to do.

Lessen your need to fix and control every outcome. This part of the manifesting process is probably the most overlooked, but also the most important. Know that the cogs are already set in motion and that what you want is already on its way. Now it’s time to enjoy what you already have, in the here and now.

And what if your dream still doesn’t manifest? Then perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be, and instead, something even better is on its way…perhaps an even bigger dream that you’re unknowingly on the cusp of discovering?

http://www.thelawofattraction.com/sick-of-waiting-4-reasons-why-you-cant-manifest/

5 Ways to Zap Negative Thoughts

Plagued by doubts and stresses? Don't try to suppress them. Use these techniques instead

How do you get someone to think about a pink elephant? Just tell them not to think about one.

Perhaps you've heard of this classic psychological thought experiment that illustrates the impracticality of simply suppressing unwanted thoughts. If not, give it a go. Attempt not to think of a pink elephant for a few minutes and see just how often Dumbo keeps popping into your head.

The same thing happens every time you remind yourself to stop stressing about your business or worrying about professional or social failure. The more you resist a thought, the more power you give it. But if trying to mentally muscle your way past negative thoughts doesn't work, what does?

Psychology, it turns out, doesn't just have a handy thought experiment to illuminate the problem, but also several suggested solutions. PsyBlog recently rounded up a long list of them culled from a journal article on the subject (though the post notes that some of these ideas are only supported by preliminary studies and require more research). If you're plagued by doubts and stresses, stop trying to white knuckle your way through them and give these alternate approaches a try.

1. Focused distraction

It stands to reason that distracting yourself from negative thoughts might work, but the details of the best way to do this might surprise you. Rather than simply mentally grope around for an idea or image that will grab your attention more than your worries, psychology suggests that having a single go-to thought to focus on when negative thoughts crop up is the way to go.

"Distraction does work but, oddly enough, studies suggest it is better to distract yourself with one thing, rather than letting the mind wander. That's because aimless mind wandering is associated with unhappiness; it's better to concentrate on, say, a specific piece of music, a TV programme or a task," PsyBlog notes.

2. Choose to worry later

Negative thoughts aren't like an unwanted phone call you can simply put off for a more convenient time, right? Actually, science suggests you might be able to quell your anxieties by setting a designated "worry period" and postponing your fretting until then.

"Researchers have tried asking those with persistent anxious thoughts to postpone their worrying until a designated 30-minute 'worry period'. Some studies suggest that people find this works as a way of side-stepping thought suppression," reports the post. "Save up all your worrying for a designated period and this may ease your mind the rest of the time."

3. Meet your anxieties head on

You're trying to avoid your negative thoughts, so the last thing you'd think to do would be to focus on them, but psychological studies suggest that, paradoxically, meeting your stresses and worries head on might actually end up quieting them. Like getting someone who's afraid of heights to jump out of an airplane, this sort of "exposure therapy" for the anxiety-ridden isn't "for the faint-hearted, but research suggests it can be useful to get rid of negative thoughts."

4. Meditate

Meditation has been shown to do everything from lower stress to increase profits. According to science you can also add zapping negative thoughts to the long list of potential benefits of the ancient practice.

"Mindfulness meditation promotes an attitude of compassion and non-judgement towards the thoughts that flit through the mind. This may also be a helpful approach to get rid of negative thoughts," PsyBlog explains.

5. Write it out

When it comes to using writing to tame your stressed out brain, you don't have to be Shakespeare -- there are no points for style. You just need to take a bit of time to get your thoughts down in writing in order to quell those nagging negative thoughts. "Expressive writing--writing about your deepest thoughts and feelings--has been tested extensively," PsyBlog says, noting that a regular writing ritual has been shown to have both health and psychological benefits, including helping to quell repetitive worries.

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/5-ways-to-zap-negative-thoughts.html