A Major Cause of Stress

Discover that stress is NOT being caused primarily by people or situations, but by your own thoughts and actions.

We tend to think of stress as something that occurs because of outside events, such as having financial problems, relationship problems, health problems, or from having too much to do. Certainly events such as these are challenging, but they are not the actual cause of stressful feelings.

Stress Is An Important Message

Stress is your inner guidance's way of letting you know that you are thinking thoughts or taking actions that are out of alignment with what is in your highest good, or that you are trying to control something that you cannot control - such as how people feel about you or the outcome of things. Stress may also be letting you know that something in your body is out of whack - you are on medications or substances that are affecting your brain and causing the stress, or you have eaten foods such as sugar, processed, or pesticide-laden food that is causing brain toxicity, leading to feeling stressed.

When you are operating from your wounded self and trying to control something over which you have no control - such as others' feelings and the outcome of things - your stress is letting you know that you are hitting your head against a wall and not accepting reality. The opposite of stress - inner peace - is the result of accepting what is, learning to take loving care of ourselves in the face of what is, and practicing gratitude for the big and small blessings on this incredible journey of life - even in the face of all the challenges. And as many of us have experienced, gratitude offers us a stress-free way to manifest what we want, and works far better than trying to control others and outcomes,

Beyond Stress

Wallace Wattles, the author of the 110-year old book, "The Science of Getting Rich," states that "Man [and woman] may come into full harmony with the Formless Substance [this is what he calls God] by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him [and her]. Gratitude unifies the mind of man [and woman] with the intelligence of Substance, so that man's [and woman's] thoughts are received by the Formless Intelligence through a deep and continuous feeling of gratitude." He states that when you frequently contemplate the mental image of what you want, "coupled with unwavering faith and devout gratitude," you set in motion the creative forces of manifestation.

Your stress is letting you know that you are doing the opposite of this - you are using your thoughts to create what you don't want and to try to control others and outcomes rather than to co-create with Spirit.

The major challenge here is about being in faith that all of this is true. You might know that this is true from the perspective of your loving adult, but your wounded self likely doesn't believe it. It is very easy for the wounded self to come in with thoughts of bad things happening, which moves you out of faith and gratitude and into stress. It is very easy for the wounded self to focus on how to try to have control over others and outcomes, which will always create stress. It is very easy for the wounded self to turn to junk food and other substances that bring the body out of balance and cause stress. It is even easy for the wounded self to try to use Inner Work and gratitude as a way of controlling God! It is so important, when opening to learning and moving into Gratitude, to make sure that your intent is to be loving to yourself and others, WITH NO OTHER AGENDA, rather than using Inner Work as just another way to attempt to control others and outcomes.

Stress Is Your Friend

Stress is your friend in that it is instantly letting you know that you are off track in your thinking and/or behavior. Instead of ignoring your stress or pacifying it with various addictions, which will ultimately cause more stress, why not do Inner Work and attend to it with a deep desire to learn about how you are off track?

When you really think about it, it is strange that our society tries so hard to get rid of stress with medications and addictions, instead of learning what it is trying to tell us. When you really get that stress is your guidance's way of telling you that you are "off the mark," (in the original Aramaic Bible, sin is translated as off the mark) in your thinking and/or behavior, you will attend to what you are doing to create it, rather than ignore it or try to get rid of it.

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How Do Your Surroundings Affect Your Creativity and Idea Generation

Your Surroundings and Your Inventiveness

Do you know what makes you more creative sometimes as opposed to other days? The answer is not easy to figure out. One day you may find you are more creative when working in a cooler place of work and the next day low lighting seems to work best. However, here has been research in his area that can give you some guidelines and a few surprising observations. It was actually shown that your surroundings do have a large impact on your inventiveness levels.

Effect of Noise Levels on Creativity and Inventiveness

Working in silence is not necessarily better for creative thinking. You don't want your work area to be to silent or extremely loud because creativity will suffer. Instead you need ambient noise levels to help you become more creative and productive. A moderate level of noise can even enhance performance on creative tasks. A study published online by the Journal of Consumer Research showed that 70 decibels may be an optimum noise level. In their noise studies, people were more apt to buy creative products too.

Creativity and Lighting

Studies have also shown that when lighting is dim, creativity is improved. A school of thought believes that stressful feelings can be reduced with lower light as you become free with your thinking. Additional research has shown that people feel free when the lights are dim. Give this a try yourself, Sit in a in a darkened room for five minutes. See if your thoughts and feelings change.

Colors Matter

The ideal colors for improving your creativity are blue and green. One doesn't need to go to the ocean or daydream looking at the sky, as even a just a picture of the blue sky and green meadows can spur creative thinking. A red surrounding also will help for projects that have a lot of detail needed. Red is a stimulating color that can actually raise the blood pressure of some people and increase adrenaline.

Surprising Thoughts on Creativity and a Cluttered Room.

Some people shine in creativity working in a messy workspace. There are many people who are convinced that a neat organized workspace is best for thinking but are really surprised about the effect of a cluttered area. It is though the clutter in the room draws your attention to new details that you may not have noticed before. In turn this stimulates your creative juices. Another idea stemming from disorganization, is having many photos and collectibles that could spur ideas of memories and even disorganization of these memoirs can cause confusion that can lead to creative thinking. Personalization of your workspace at home may be exactly what you need but an employer may frown on any disorganization.

The Effect of Traveling on Creative Thinking

You may not be surprised to find out that journeying to new places of the world has an amazing effect on brain enhancements. In new nation-states or even parts of your own country, the different experiences of food, music, culture, even geography has a big impact on creativity. Those who study the brain can attest to neural pathways being stimulated by change New tradition is to you, speech patterns, ideas uncommon to you will also get you thinking creatively. More interactions with new cultures and people also add to inventiveness. Immersion of one self into other cultural experiences or activities even can generate new ideas and ingenuity.

If you feel that your idea generation skills are lacking why not try one of the items from above to increase them. You never know what sparks of ideas and ambitions you suddenly become inspired with.

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How To Refute Irrational Ideas That Stress You Out

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the same event is stressful and sometimes it's not? Or maybe there's something that just drives you crazy, while your spouse, friend, or co-worker seems unaffected-or even thinks it's funny?

What is it that makes something stressful for you or not? Is there some variable that makes all the difference?

In the 1960s, psychologist Albert Ellis developed "Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy" when he recognized the strong link between how we interpret events and the emotions and behaviors that result.

Most significantly, he noticed that "Between the event and the emotion is realistic or unrealistic self-talk. The self-talk produces the emotions. Your own thoughts, directed and controlled by you, are what create anxiety, anger, and depression." (p.136, "The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook," by Martha Davis, Ph.D., Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman, MSW, and Matthew McKay, Ph.D.)

Taking it one step further to complete the chain, your emotions then determine your actions.

So, the causal chain goes like this: activating events, interpretation (thoughts, self-talk), emotions, and behavior. This becomes a feedback loop in which all of the above (event, thought, feeling, behavior) are linked together. Once this pattern is encoded in your body and brain it becomes easy to trigger.

For example, you might be faced with a challenging task at work or in a family relationship which you interpret through the lens of a past failure in a similar situation. This makes you feel hopeless, so you withdraw from the situation to avoid feeling bad again.

Ellis identified 10 common irrational beliefs that launch us into stressful feelings which result in poor coping behaviors.

10 Irrational Beliefs

1. It's essential to have love and approval for me to feel good.

2. I must be unfailingly competent, successful, and perfect to deserve good things.

3. Certain people are evil and should be punished.

4. It's horrible when things don't turn out the way I want them to.

5. External events cause human suffering.

6. The unknown is dangerous and scary.

7. It's easier to avoid difficulties than face them head on.

8. I need a higher authority to validate my judgments and actions.

9. The past determines the present.

10. Happiness comes from endless leisure and relaxation.

These are just a sampling of the irrational ideas that produce crippling feelings and behaviors. It's not that there is no truth in them. It's how we use them against ourselves that is decisive.

At the heart of these beliefs is the assumption that "things are done to me" or that "I am a victim of circumstances beyond my control." That disempowered way of thinking lies at the core of the stress we feel.

Ellis discovered that, if you can refute your irrational ideas, you can interrupt the chain of reaction, and create a new outcome. If you reframe your thinking, you will feel and act differently. By doing this, you become stress resistant and stress resilient.

Ellis suggested five steps:

5 Steps to Refute Irrational Ideas

1. Write down the objective facts at the time you become upset. Try to describe "what happened" without writing a big story around it. For example, "Bob criticized my report and I walked out of the meeting."

2. Write down any self-talk about the event. This is the story you are telling about what happened, including any value judgments, beliefs, predictions about what it means for you, and worries, such as "I'll never be good at this," "I don't deserve a raise, unless I'm perfect," or "If they don't like me, I'll lose my job."

3. Write down your dominant emotional response, such as "I feel angry, afraid, anxious, sad, depressed, worthless, and so on.

4. Dispute the irrational ideas identified in Step 2. Do this one idea at a time. First, identify the idea or belief in your inner self-talk, such as "I'll never be good at this." 

Then, ask yourself what evidence supports that belief. For example, remember times when you failed in the past in similar situations.

Next, ask yourself what evidence is against this belief? Find exceptions or remember times when the opposite was true.

In this example, you could find evidence for the opposite idea that "I can get good at this." Remember times when you used criticism as constructive feedback that helped you improve what you were doing.

Seeing both sides of an irrational belief supports the insight that there are alternative interpretations you can choose from. Which leads to the final step.

5. Substitute alternative self-talk that is more realistic, positive, empowering, and productive.

For example, "I can use this criticism as feedback to get better at what I am doing. This person did me a favor by pointing out shortcomings in what I was doing. Without that feedback, I wouldn't have known how to improve. This is the best thing that could have happened."

Can you see the transformative power in this process?

I've used this strategy many times with great success. However, in my experience, there's one preliminary step missing here-a step can make all the difference!

Sometimes you are so wound up in your stress that you just can't seem to step back and go through this kind of rational process. You need to first take the edge off the stress you feel. You need to activate your body's natural relaxation response.

So, what helps you release stress in the heat of the moment? Is it taking a walk, a few deep breaths, a little meditation, or a workout at the gym?

Once you've done that, you can revisit the situation from a much clearer state. Then, you can use the steps above and truly change how you are relating to that situation.

Enjoy your practice!

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