The Time Bomb in Your Head

[tconnor]

Self Motivation Tips #114
The Time Bomb in Your Head

Are you slowly killing yourself? If you have never read an article about stress you have probably just landed here from some distant planet.

I will also wager that if you are an employee, employer, parent or spouse you know the symptoms and causes of stress. In this tip it is not my intention to re-hash a lot of existing dribble or scientific mumbo jumbo about this deadly killer. It is my objective, however, to ask you to realize the negative consequences of your stressors and to do something about them before it is too late.

Let me summarize my all day seminar on stress with one sentence. Stress is your inside-out reaction to outside-in circumstances, events or people.

Each of us daily, even hourly must confront people and issues that bring with them a great potential for stress. We can not stick our head in the sand and ask the world to go away. We must deal in the hectic, fast paced ever changing world of business and relationships. And we must survive as well as we can as we go about these daily routines. Most of us create our own stress and our stress reactions . We do so in a variety of ways.

1. We create deadlines and expectations.
2. We set ourselves up for frustration and disappointment.
3. We have unrealistic attitudes and goals.
4. We live out of balance.
5. We carry around blame and resentment.
6. We suppress feelings and emotions.
7. But most of all we fail to keep all of this in perspective as we move through the days of our life.

So why do we do this to ourselves? And we do - do it to ourselves. No one does it to us. We do it in the name of success, financial gain, profit, competition, winning, more and more and more. And in the long run we end up with less. Less satisfying relationships, poor health, less fun, less happiness and less pure joy of living. Stress keeps you locked in the future or the past and out of the present.

Stress in my opinion is the single greatest threat to happiness, joy and a truly rewarding life. I hope I have your attention. If you are under stress you don't need me to tell you. Your body is doing an excellent job of telling you this very minute. You are either ignoring the signals or overriding them with drugs, pills or stimulants of some kind. There is something you can do to alleviate all of this stress in your life. You will not find my suggestions very profound or enlightening. But they will help you live longer.

1. Lighten up.
2. Accept that life and business is a game. You win some and you lose some. You will never win them all and you won't lose them all.
3. Relax. You can not keep draining your battery without recharging it from time to time.
4. Slow down. You are not in a race. If you think you are, trust me you will never win. Your only hope is to just try and finish, alive.
5. Stay in the present. Your mad dash into your future is all in vain. The time you miss now, the fun you miss now, the relationships you miss now and the simple pleasures you miss now can not be found in the future. They can not be enjoyed from a hospital bed or from the grave.
6. Laugh a lot. Laughter is nourishment for the soul.
7. Take time to play.
8. Accept people and life as it is. You can not change anyone. People are who they are and act the way they act . Period. Life is. You can not manipulate the rules of the universe and life to your liking.
9. Rest. It is not a sin to do nothing. It is not a crime to spend time in an aimless pursuit of nothingness.