Stress and Life

[tconnor]

Success Tips #197
Stress and Life

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, spouse, student, retired working - on and on - you know the symptoms of stress. You may not however be totally aware of the causes and how you are contributing to this deadly killer.

In this tip, it is not my intention to rehash a lot of existing dribble or scientific mumbo-jumbo about this life issue. It is my objective, however, to get you to realize the negative consequences of your stressors and to do something about them before it may be 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, circumstances and issues that bring with them a great potential for stress however we cannot 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.

• We create unrealistic deadlines and expectations of ourselves or others.
• We set ourselves up for frustration and disappointment in a variety of ways.
• We have unrealistic attitudes and goals.
• We say yes when we should say no to things in life.
• We live out of balance.
• We fail to execute - take action - on our life's dreams, desires and hopes.
• We carry around blame, guilt, anger and resentment.
• We suppress feelings and emotions.
• There is more...

But most of all, we fail to keep any or all of these in perspective as we move through the moments and days of our life. So why do we do this to ourselves? And we do it to ourselves. No one does it to us.

We do it in the name of; success, financial gain, profit, competition, winning, better, bigger, sexier, younger, wiser, 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. We miss a friend’s smile. We long for a peaceful day. We cheat ourselves of the simple things of life that money cannot buy. Life is not perfect. Relationships are not perfect. Business is never perfect. People are not machines. Life is to be lived one joyous minute at a time. 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.

• One – lighten up.
• Two – relax.
• Three – slow down.
• Four – stay in the present moment.
• Five – laugh a lot.
• Six – take time to play.
• Seven – accept people and life as it is.
• Eight – simplify your life.
• Nine - feel gratitude for what you have.
• Ten- accept the simple fact that you can't get or have everything in life that you want.

My final thought
Life is filled every minute with things that can 'stress you out'. You have a choice in every instance. You can give power over to the thing or person for the quality of your life or you can retain this power for yourself. I can only tell you from personal experience that when you give this power over your thoughts, emotions and stressors to others you actually give them the power of - health or sickness and often life or death of your life to them. Don't do it. Your life is yours not theirs!