Stress! What is it? Why do we suffer it and what can we do about it?

I have found a simple way to start to deal with stress and move through it to reach happiness and fulfilment.

Why are we always talking about stress, as if it is taking control of us? “Oh, I can’t think straight… this project is really stressing me out” or… “I’m so worried about this bill that I’ve gotta pay, that I’m losing sleep” …And so on.

This is not stress. They are external sources of stress, that we are allowing to take hold of our thoughts, emotions and in many cases… our health! What a crazy notion! That’s like saying a radio controlled model aircraft took control of its owner and made him fly!! …It’s as crazy as that! Realising that stress is an instinctive, emotional reaction to the external source, is the first step to dealing with stress and the misery that comes with it.

We were designed to feel stress. That’s how we have evolved over many thousands of years. But only for short bursts, so that we can get out of trouble and back to the safety of our caves. It’s a survival instinct and a very clever one at that! As a result of fear, it gives us strength like we would not normally know in our daily lives, speed that could helps us fight or outrun a fast predator and in some cases the abandonment of fear, so that we can go back to the fight and save our offspring. In short, it focuses our minds on a single thought process… Be strong, be fast, survive!

But that fear instinct to survive an immediate threat, has been replaced with something much more long and drawn out. It grinds us down daily. Taking away our sense of focus, because over time, the problems start to accumulate. We find that our first problem does not have an immediate fix. And by the time we start to figure it out, another problem appears. Now we have two problems, to take care of. Which in turn gives us even less time, focus and energy to deal with the third problem when it arrives… And it will! It starts to mount and everything is now starting to get a bit fuzzy. We can’t see a solution, because every direction we look, there is a problem.

Sometimes, we just lose our way – as I did. We feel so surrounded by the things that we don’t want, that we stop looking for the things that we do want.  It’s a if we are stuck in a dense forest and all we can see everywhere we look, is darkness. We forget to look at our compass, to regain our sense of direction. In short, the best advice I can give anyone suffering from stress, is to take a leap forward in time. What do I mean by this? Image if you could click your fingers and everything was suddenly exactly as you would want it to be and all was good again. What would this look like? Visualise in 360 degrees the whole experience, with as much sensation as you can muster. Colour, emotion, touch… the whole thing. Now elevate your mind from the dense forest and see the edge of it, were you can start to feel safe again. You might even find that it’s not as far as you thought! Now find a way to move towards that visualisation. You will find with a bit of practice, that everything that was a problem, hindrance or obstacle, is just a ‘thing’ that you have to pass, because once you start to fill your thoughts with everything that you want and how you want to get it…

The bottom line: Figure out exactly what you want, What it will look like and what realistic steps you need to take to get it. Do this and all of the other rubbish just fades away.