Thursday, January 24, 2013
We all know people who are obsessed with activity. They are the busiest people on the planet and they are going to make absolutely sure you know it. They wear their "busy badges" like awards on a merit belt, and their favorite badges of all are their STRESS BADGES. They can tell you about the ones they got from their kids, their boss, their coworkers, their spouse, they can even tell you about the one they got on the way to work today. They love to tell you about them because they believe stressing and accomplishing are synonymous.
The opposite is actually true. The more stressed we become the more our reptilian survival systems kick in reducing both cognitive ability and creative energy. Stress is not a result of our experiences, but our stories. Regardless of how accurate these stories might be or how deserving the "stressors", the physical stresses they generate do not come at us they come from us.
In the fall of 2008 we made up our minds to fire our biggest client. The laundry list of their "violations" was long, egregious and irrefutable, but the stress created was entirely self-inflicted. We spent countless hours proving our "rightness" at the expense of our happiness. The experience was invaluable, painful and provided irreplaceable lessons.
Here are seven ideas in action to reduce the stressing in your life:
1.Don't try and change your behavior, change your awareness.
2.Notice how you are thinking. Do your thoughts bring you peace or pain?
3.If your thoughts bring you pain, you are resisting what is.
4.By the time you resist anything it is already gone, and there is nothing you have ever done that has ever changed the past.
5.Accept the experience and look for the lesson. EVERYTHING happens to teach us something ABOUT OURSELVES.
6.Appreciate the gift of becoming conscious about your thinking. It is our unconsciousness that brings us pain.
7.Take a bigger view. Step back from the abyss of unconscious emotion and view the abundance of opportunity to grow from the experience.