The best way to lower stress is by changing the way you see the things. Stress is an unnatural inner state that occurs when you lose your inner balance. Stress can be positive, like being so excited you’re ready to jump out of your pants; it can also be negative, and come in the form of worries or sadness. It doesn’t work in the long-term to live in extremes of black and white. And it is essential to learn to keep your inner balance no matter what is happening around or inside you.
It doesn’t mean you don’t care or you don’t pay attention or don’t enjoy things, but you choose to live each moment with delight and acceptance and refuse to let the outer world determine your inner feelings. If you worry here and now, you create more worries in future. Learning to be in balance is one step closer to harmony.
Stress creates chaos in your thoughts and feelings; it can cause you to lose your goal, faith and the present moment.
1. You can’t control time, others or the way the things happen.
There are things you can and you should control—your mind and your reactions to situations. And there are things you can’t control—time, other people, etc. When you mix those things, you think you know how things should be, and you get stressed.
Time is the main reason why people get stressed: to be on time, to meet the deadline, to manage to do all things which are planned. But you can’t do more by chasing time. The more you are in a hurry, the faster time goes. When you are in a rush because you are late, at every intersection, there is a red light, and you get angry.
But when you look at it from another perspective, you accept that there is a reason why everything happens the way it does. Maybe you are being saved from something what could happen if you arrive there 5 minutes earlier. Or maybe you can use the time to prepare yourself and have a more successful meeting. Trust time; trust the Universe. Try not to push time, but rather, smoothly flow through it.
2. Success and failure are just chances to learn.
Success and failure do not determine how you feel and who you are. Who you are is more than that. The mind focuses on the visible results so much that you totally forget that anything that happens in this world is an opportunity for you to learn a lesson and grow. When you stop wasting your energy by judging what you have done or haven’t done and whether it is good or bad, you see that there is no need to stress about it. At the end of the day, take a look back, stop the rush and see how much you have received from everything that has happened with you that day.
3. Don’t ask too much from yourself and others.
When you have a goal, most of the time, you want to achieve it as soon as possible, creating tension. It is not about how fast you will do it, but how you will achieve it.
4. Learn to cooperate.
Everybody lives in their own imagination and has a vision of how things should be done. You want to make everything happen as you have imagined; the same goes for the other person—he or she wants to do things his or her own way. It is good when both ways match, but if not, you can make a lot of stress for each other. Try not to control the outer world; instead, cooperate with it. Talk, listen and look for solutions together.
5. How does it look in reality?
The mind can set up anything, and make you stress about what it has created. So from time to time, you have to step out of any situation and take a look at it with a fresh mind, without any desires or needs. Look from a different angle and perhaps you can notice that your mind has created your “problems.”
6. Relax and exercise.
When you are tired physically, you have no energy to inwardly battle stress. Any exercise helps to clear your mind and release the tension. Relaxation helps you to recharge yourself. There are so many ways to be physically active and relax; just give yourself a time, choose one and do it.
I do believe that anybody can learn to have inner balance, no matter what happens in the outer world. Regardless of how much you have to do or what important meetings or presentations are coming up, you can always choose to stay calm within and to become more aware of everything that you experience.
It is all about how you see the things and how you react to them. Your mind creates your own reality; if you see the stress, it is there. But there is always a tranquility and light. Try harder and make it be your daily habit to feel the light touch of Subtle World and be faithful. Each day, learn to change your consciousness and see things differently.
“And in the end I think I’ve learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I’ve even gone one step further than my father did: The truth is I now don’t travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
Tim from About Time
What is your special secret which helps you to cope with stress?
Featured photo credit: Finding Balance/woodleywonderworks via flickr.com
