Before you worry about the beauty of your body, worry about the health of your body.
We have a right to decide how we want our bodies to look and feel, but unfortunately we do not exercise these rights. Instead, we tend to drift along, victims of our own ignorance of the fact that we can have what we want, if we are willing to take that first step toward developing the self-discipline to govern our thoughts.
Did you once have a grand plan which has become obsolete and no longer serves you? If there are areas in your life which must change to help you create better results, a redesign may be in order. Consider going back to the ‘drawing board’ to deconstruct what isn’t working and start anew.
A diamond’s creation requires immense pressure and intense temperatures to reach its highest potential. Without enduring the adversity and pressure of its environment, the diamond would never become the treasure it was meant to be. May the changes you grow through bring incredible value in helping you forge a remarkable and multi-faceted life.
Re-imagination is the birthplace for vision and change. Your imagination is one of the most valuable talents you have and deserves your full attention. Imagining how you want to live your life is one thing, but connecting your imagination to a visual representation will give you exactly the traction you need to make it a reality.
Connecting with others gives us a sense of inclusion, connection, interaction, safety, and community. Your vibe attracts your tribe, so if you want to attract positive and healthy relationships, be one! Staying connected and getting reconnected feeds the flow of goodness which empowers our humanity.
Passion is that strong feeling of emotion, ecstasy, or excitement which you feel for something or someone. This sizzling desire can light up your soul and fuel your commitment to be persistent in spite of obstacles and unfavorable circumstances. This depth of motivation can transform your life unlike anything else and reignite your purpose and your passion.
A life lived well, or poorly, uses our resources to such an extent that it can weaken many areas which were once strong. Simply from wear and tear, we may tire and need to be re-fortified. Seek ways to re-strengthen so that you may perform at higher levels and increase your endurance to enjoy a life you love.
Are you comfortable and willing to be of service to others, but find it difficult to receive the same in return? Why are people so quick to resist receiving, even when they need the help? Your ability to receive not only opens the space for great things to enter your life, but it returns a gift of grace to the giver.
Somewhere between handling challenges, taking care of business, and juggling responsibilities, you may have lost pieces of yourself which you long to recover. Perhaps they were buried and forgotten long ago. Rediscovering is more than just being reminded of these golden treasures. It is being able to excavate your riches by pulling them out, polishing them off, and allowing them to shine again.
Do you ever feel like you have been stopped dead in your tracks? That you have fallen and can’t get up? Or like you are stuck in a rut or wading in muck? Paralysis, inertia, and being stuck, can be disempowering and disabling. What is it going to take for you to restart your engines and get moving again?
A unified team is a force to be reckoned with. When teams pull together to serve a higher purpose, the synergy builds momentum and helps everyone head in the right direction. When people reunite, pull together, have each other’s backs, and strive to achieve a clearly defined purpose, the culture is empowered to produce extraordinary outcomes.
Breathe in peace, breathe out stress. Relaxing can bring relief to much of what ails you. In our stressful and often negative world, your decision to make relaxing a priority will help you navigate, handle, and minimize stress. Doing so will positively impact your health, well-being, and happiness.
People lose their enthusiasm and disengage for a variety of reasons. It can be due to boredom, disinterest, rejection, apathy, overwhelm, or exhaustion. Once a person begins to disengage, the tendency can bleed over into other areas of their life and disconnect them from what would actually bring them joy.
You are the author of your own life story. You have the leading role and get to determine how you interact with your supporting cast and other characters. Without realizing it, you may have allowed the events in your life to write your story for you rather than taking deliberate action to write it in your own voice. What will it take to love your life story to create the happy endings you desire?
Have you ever made a commitment for which you felt conviction or passion at the time in which it was made, yet as time went by, you lost interest, lost passion, got distracted, or found something else which would result in a greater reward? If your commitments have wavered, recommit yourself to fulfill your promises and do the right thing.
Like the butterfly, you will also go through stages of change, rebirth, and new beginnings for transformation and renewal. Use these changes to create a clarity of purpose for a personal renaissance. Break out of your comfort zone, shed old layers, and stretch in your potential to become your best self. Be free of outdated limitations, experience rebirth and take flight.
Some people contend that there are no new ideas and everything under the sun has already been created. Thankfully, innovation and regeneration continue to prove otherwise. New and amazing innovations are born every day from the regeneration of ideas and creativity. How can you create something brand new using your current resources?
The Law of Reciprocity demonstrates that when we give something from or of ourselves, the receiving party feels an inclination to give back. And in turn, when someone does something nice for you, you naturally want to return the favor. Reciprocity begins a momentum for mutual caring and sweet reward.
To build up your speed and create momentum, do you need to be pushed or pulled? Successfully shifting gears requires synchronization, coordination, and a sense of speed, whether fast or slow. Sometimes it is simply a matter of shaking up your routine to get things rolling in the right direction.
Do you ever feel like you are running on empty? What is missing from your life? What would it take to plug the holes and stop the energy drains? When you see, feel, or think about lack, scarcity, or emptiness, seek ways to fill the holes, replenish and return to a state of abundance and fulfillment.
Many people associate resolutions with failure because they’ve broken promises to themselves so many times before. They don’t want to fail again, and as a result, they avoid setting goals. For the wise people who do set resolutions, research has shown you are ten times more likely to improve your life when you do. What are you willing to do to make your dreams come true?
When you redefine something, you stretch your perception and open your mind to new ideas. You discover new meanings and get to see your previous style, behaviors, or beliefs from an expanded vantage point. Consider new options which would make your life more meaningful, bring more fulfilment, and encourage you to shine.
Reconciling is about cleaning out your psychic closet. Do you have unresolved issues which are draining your reserves, causing hurt feelings, filling you with regret, or taxing your tenacity? Reconciling can allow you to move forward with acceptance and surrender, rather than berating yourself for what cannot be changed. Are you ready to enjoy peace?
Great leaders understand the importance of assigning the right people to the right positions. If you put the wrong person in the wrong place, no matter how talented or earnest they are, they will never reach the peak of their potential. Their strengths will be underutilized and they may never measure up to your expectations. Reassign to get the best out of others and the situation.
You know what it feels like when you are out of alignment ~ physically, spiritually, emotionally, or mentally. It wears you down, stresses you out, and negatively impacts your health and well-being. Life becomes more of a struggle, tasks seem harder to achieve, and relationships take more effort. Once you identify what may be causing misalignment, take deliberate steps to close the gaps, realign your attitude and actions to feel dynamic and balanced again.
Have you ever experienced a shattering in your own personal life? Where death, divorce, financial loss, failure, or disaster changed your world to such an extent that you weren’t sure how to rebuild again? Clearing the debris from the aftermath is a great first step. It enables you to start with a clean slate so you can rebuild exactly what you desire. Where can you begin?
Successfully juggling the demands of your personal and professional life may feel like a daunting and unrealistic task. Employers know all too well that if an employee’s personal life is suffering, their work life will too. And visa-versa. Even the most self-aware and diligent person can be challenged. How can you rebalance your life to prevent burnout and promote well-being?
Revise what you need to as changes occur and new information becomes available. Be willing to go back, look again, and consider where and how you can make adjustments in order to stay in alignment with your vision, mission, passion, and purpose. Rather than rehashing the past, know that your life is a working draft and you can revise the story you write about it. Let the revising begin.
In the pursuit of trying to be all things to all people or trying to live up to another person’s expectations, do you find yourself saying ‘Yes’ when you wish you’d said ‘No?’ When something is not in your best interest or goes against your values, learn to refuse and graciously reply, “No.
Is there something which you have lost and miss terribly? Would the quality of your life improve if you regained it? Would it make you happier or healthier? Would you be more effective, efficient, or productive if it came back? If there is something which once was and you yearn for its return, find ways to regain its presence and place in your world.
When you rearrange, make it meaningful and significant. Don’t rearrange just for the sake of rearranging. It would be as “pointless as rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.” In other words, why waste your time on frivolous activities which could be easily undone or do nothing to contribute to the solution of your problem?
Dragging around pain and attachments from the past can jeopardize your health, your relationships, and your happiness. It can undermine your motivation, discourage your progress, and make everything in life harder. What can you release to simplify your life, lighten your load and find more joy?
We continuously make promises and create agreements with ourselves and others. Some of these agreements are mutually beneficial. However, when you realize that things you agreed to in the past are no longer helpful, possible, or relevant, renegotiate. Be invested enough in your situations or relationships for renegotiation to take place.
There comes a time when you may realize that what once worked brilliantly for you is no longer effective, relevant, or competitive. And as a result, you set out to do a make-over, or design new improvements that will make it better. After your innovations, hard work, and implementation, the time comes to relaunch, reveal your changes, and reveal the new.
What needs to be cleansed and refreshed in your life? What yucky stuff has created a stagnant and negative environment that muddies your waters and depletes your energy? Be willing to stir things up and make it messy for a short while so you may enjoy more clarity ad vibrancy for a long while.
Convince yourself everyday that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.
No matter how strong or strong-willed you are, you cannot live a stressful, maxed-out life without that pace eventually biting you in the butt. It is necessary to take breaks, set parameters, and be kind to yourself if you want to continue making an impact in your little corner of the world.
Learn to say no to demands, requests, invitations, and activities that leave you with no time for yourself. Until I learned to say no, and mean it, I was always overloaded by stress. You may feel guilty and selfish at first for guarding your down- time, but you’ll soon find that you are a much nicer, more present, more productive person in each instance you do choose to say yes.
Our culture encourages us to plan every moment and fill our schedules with one activity and obligation after the next, with no time to just be. But the human body and mind require downtime to rejuvenate. I have found my greatest moments of joy and peace just sitting in silence, and then I take that joy and peace with me out into the world.
If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.
Breathing is our participation with the cosmic dance. When our breath is in harmony, cosmos nourishes us in every sense.
If you are feeling unhappy in life for any reason and often getting negative results, try this -> start replacing negative thoughts with the positive one, make a plan and act on them. The more positive thoughts you have the more positive and happy your will become and results are bound to be positive sooner or later.-Subodh Gupta author "Stress Management a Holistic approach - 5 steps plan
There’s surprising relief and regeneration in finding ourselves within a moment of genuine grace, however small or temporary it may be.
Laughter has got to be the single healthiest activity one can perform. Just think how healthy you would be if you could sincerely laugh at that which now oppresses you.
Recovery through sleep isn’t going to happen if the majority of the components of your being aren’t getting enough stimulation or resistance to work against. Your brain may be tired after work, but if your body and emotions haven’t been challenged through the day, they’re going to keep irritating you even if you’re asleep. They don’t need rest; they need work for real recovery to take place.
The typical image of a depressed, lazy and tired person is someone hunched over and inert. Often, the assumption is that if one had more enthusiasm and inspiration, he would then stand up straight and move. In many cases, this equation is backward. But, as with everything related to one’s physicality, balance is the key. An overly erect and rigid posture may convey confidence and power to some, but it also causes a subtle accumulation of tension and rigidity on various levels, including psychological and emotional.
No one will improve his health significantly without accurately perceiving priorities, knowing clearly what is at stake if those are not attended to and what is to be gained if acted on correctly. That’s the basic homework before any change can come about. Then that knowledge has to be transformed into a sustainable motivation.
Well-being, or wholeness, implies integrity and harmony between all existing elements, providing freedom for the whole.
Ironically, many of the institutions that run the economy, such as medicine, education, law and even psychology are largely dependent upon failing health. If you add up the amounts of money exchanged in the control, anticipation and reaction to failing health (insurance, pharmaceutical research and products, reactive or compensatory medicine, related legal issues, consultation and therapy for those who are unwilling to improve their physical health and claim or believe the problem is elsewhere, etc.), you end up with an enormous chunk. To keep that moving, we need people to be sick. Then we have the extreme social emphasis placed on the pursuit and maintenance of a lifestyle based on making money at any cost, often at the sacrifice of health, sanity and well-being.
Physical well-being necessitates listening to what you already know, and then taking it seriously enough to act accordingly. When you wake up and feel the impulse to arch your back, stretch and exhale with a loud sigh, for God’s sake, do it.
In my experience, most people are actually seeking recovery from the monotony and anxiety of qualitative repetition. This applies to body, emotions and mind. And that monotony and anxiety involves inertia just as much as over-use, meaning inertia in some areas and over-use in others.
Yearning often does not provide a sense of attainment or “peace,” as it is fuel for one’s personal purpose, to in some specific way give or create; to do that is not necessarily easy or peaceful.
If I were to make a list of focus for well-being, I would begin with lifestyle (the totality of one’s circumstance and how that is engaged, including job and relationships, and proximity to nature), attending to the physical functions correctly (posture, breathing, exercise, food, rest, etc.), consistent expression of your natural range of qualities, working and playing well and hard, and designing things so that you are doing what compels you. Obviously, you can’t give this list out as a prescription for physical problems and diseases, but then again, it is probably the correct prescription. If one were to follow it, any specific problem, even extreme, would almost certainly resolve itself.
It’s highly refined stuff—holding to one’s purpose and focus, but also intuiting the value of being a piece in a larger design and evolution. The balance between these two rhythms is where and when true harmony is achieved and magic happens. Often, just the release of the obsession for personal preferences and to personally gain opens the door.
The essential dynamic underlying almost every elite and esoteric physical art is work with the breath, so there’s information available. I would only add that it’s unfortunate that so much work is done with it, and not much play. Laughter has got to be the single healthiest activity one can perform. Just think how healthy you would be if you could sincerely laugh at that which now oppresses you. I’ve mentioned before that one good measure of someone’s depth of spirituality is how long it takes before they become offended. Imagine laughing hysterically at the criticisms, complaints and impositions you receive. At the least, you’d be breathing well.
People generally believe that stress is responsible for depletion, but apathy and uninspired systematic repetition are equally responsible. Or rather, systematic repetition produces as much or more stress and anxiety as anything else.
Getting down to the gym a couple days a week and having low-fat milk in your morning latte isn’t going to make much of a dent in a system or lifestyle that is essentially, well, unwell.
If you’re ignoring a high percentage of the elements of your entire being, and the range of qualities they can naturally engage, there will be no real recovery or progress until you do. The typical relentless worker is just as lazy as the typical indulgent idler; they’re both just going through the habitual motions. To break the repetitive pattern, and discover more energy and effectiveness, one simply must stretch out in all directions, rotating focus and application of the qualities that make up one’s natural versatility.
The human body, like the human mind, is best at versatility and adaptability. This is our greatest skill and our greatest chance to unlock natural potential. What that means in terms of physical movement is that a fairly equal amount of time and effort should be allocated to the widest possible range of activity. That includes strength, flexibility, precision and endurance, but it certainly doesn’t stop there.
As I’ve mentioned too often before, we are governed, and specifically our physicality is governed, by fairly strict rules, which are easily observable in nature. We have some freedom to manipulate some of these, but really not by very much. Everyone knows, or at least has the information, about the horrors of ignoring health issues and expecting your body to do what you want it to do with the least investment in it. Another “authority” telling you what you should do is not the answer.
Besides having been identified recently as the single most important factor in what men find sexy in women, the list of how correct posture influences internal organs and systems, and also mood and general energy, is very long indeed. Your internal environment depends on the efficiency of the flow of elements within it. Obviously, this includes oxygen, blood, hormones and nutrients, but also all interaction between nerves and the brain. The spine, which is your foundation and support, has a natural position that guarantees the efficiency of movement and interaction of the related elements. Your internal organs are all right alongside the spine and depend on its correct position to function well. Any prolonged restriction or deviation from this natural position will result in some, at least partial, dysfunction. Over a long time, the results can be devastating.
I look at the idea of rest as rotating one’s qualitative focus, not just doing less or changing activity. The role of rest is recovery. If you keep pushing the same quality button (fast or slow, concentrated or dispersed, hard-working or lazy…) for the same component all the time, of course it’s going to become depleted, just like if you keep working a single muscle in the same fashion or don’t use it at all.
The trick is in genuinely appreciating the elements of apparent resistance while you are engaging them. Not to oppose or remove them as much as to creatively fold them into one’s linear line of movement, exploiting them and making the necessary adjustments as you go.
A balanced diet” is not so much about protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios. The real ratios to consider, at least for the typical American or European, are energy consumption/expenditure, pleasure/actual need, food/everything else.
If one follows what is in one’s heart (let’s leave out mind for the moment), one ends up with what one truly values and loves in life—and one acts accordingly. One’s own private indulgent cyclic habitual reactive subjective transitory feelings are, hopefully, not at the head of that list.
If you, one, loves something or someone, that means that one is willing to, and does, sacrifice for it. That is, one chooses to do and give what is better to the being or thing one loves than to sacrifice the loved one for the personal emotion that is unrelated to or even hinders the giving. In other words, the way to transform an emotion is with a deeper one. This involves discernment and, yes, discipline, which are both frowned upon and seen as emotionless and less important. Which is immaturity, plain and simple, and is the fundamental aspect of human growth from child to adolescence to adult.
Appreciation, affection, focus and intention fill up the space of self-reflection, and one loses oneself in the engagement. And what a relief it is when you get there.
Everyone claims to want the truth. If you really want it, I’d suggest investing seriously in humor and this mysterious skill of transforming bad news into good. Otherwise, you’ll only get more frustrated.
Truth, or mystery basically, seeks the expression of itself. That is, evolution exists to create more mystery, not to answer or end the existing mysteries. This is why with every “truth” revealed, or every answer given, all that actually occurs is the creation of yet a more complex and mysterious question.
Every brilliant theory in physics, for example, has been proven mainly wrong, except for the most recent ones, which will be. The big players, like Newton and Copernicus, gave us answers that were later proved more wrong than right. What they did—and why they are valued—is direct our attention to more piercing and compelling questions or possibilities. (I’d suggest the same holds true for the big spiritual players, but that’s a different letter.)
The depth and complexity of the questions we’ve recently been engaging tend to ignite associated questions very quickly. The family members of these subjects—purpose, responsibility, devotion, commitment, trust, yearning—and their neighbors—frustration, jealousy, ambition, sloth, etc.—get all excited and have things to say to each other. Because of the pressure and tension between them, one has to negotiate the dialogue carefully and use a lot of patience, tolerance and other unsexy qualities. Otherwise, we’ve got another war on our hands.
The nature of yearning is urgent so as to guarantee evolution, change.
As we move through time, we age, with the general speed of everything and the chaos that that produces in us in the form of anxiety, fear, confusion and negotiating an already-existing war, there is little time and space left to adjust to our developing relationship to yearning. In other words, as our needs are met, the question answered, we don’t then move on to the next question.
There exists a direct link, or harmony, between the past, the present and the future. This has been misinterpreted, or exaggerated in both directions, either by the assumption that everything is random, or that there is already a predetermined destiny. There is an actual link, and there is a lot of mystery or room to play and invent.
The experience of yearning is a composite of Nature’s purest impulse in you (the need for radical movement; think of all the analogies in all the religions and philosophies concerning the truth and beauty of light; if you take it literally, that means to become truth, beauty, light, get moving at 299,792,458 kilometres per second) combined with your unique qualities and talents of past/present/future (experiences, potentials, attractions and distractions, imagination, etc.). Simply put: need for radical movement in a definite direction.
The essential war within, and the cause of suffering, begins with the presumption that yearning, impulse and curiosity, desire and question, exist so as to end them. To attain, to acquire, to answer.
Like all things organically formed, there does exist a harmony, interrelated patterns, intuitive logic, and purpose, but these are subtle and you can’t find them exclusively by emotional or intellectual analysis. At first glance it’s all too complex and liquid-like, and our minds and emotions look for control and relief. To know water, you have to get wet; you can’t just sit back and analyze its components. So, do try to enjoy the swim, and don’t be afraid to just sit back and drink now and then—the water’s clean.
Traditionally, true contemplation involves an act of devotion, wherein self-consciousness is removed by transferring consciousness onto the thing at hand. The better you perceive it, the less you observe yourself doing that. In other words, you could say that, at least for the extended moments of engaging it, you love it more than yourself.
Nothing stands still, even if it looks as though it does. Look at a light in the room you are in right now. It appears to be stationary, while the fact is that millions of rays are moving towards you at the speed of light (299,792,458 kilometres per second). Even in every “inanimate” object, particles are moving rapidly and constantly. Nothing within or outside of you remains completely still.
On a psychological and physiological level, the habits of contraction are often caused by the desire to control or acquire, even to acquire generosity or devotion or emptiness. These are subtle and take time to identify and release. Under this is the desire for self-gain or improvement, to win something or better something. Those intentions are healthy enough up to a point, but to really see and engage what you have in front of you, you have to intend that it gains or wins.
There is an actual and palpable hierarchy of emotional, mental and physiological intensity that corresponds to the actual capacities and limitations of human beings. In other words, there does exist a real and definable scale of suffering, and of joy.
Although each of us has the right to believe we are suffering, I suppose, there is a definite and ultimately essential distinction to be made between actual suffering, its cause and resolution, and invented or imagined suffering.
The subjective experience of intense pain (“That’s all I can take”) corresponds exactly to one’s subjective experience in relation to truth (“That’s all I can take”).
The transitory and random quality of emotions (“Well, that’s just the way I feel about it”) is deeply connected to, and largely the cause of, random engagement of one’s values and priorities. This very randomness and inconsistency is actually the cause of deeper suffering, primarily through the accumulation of addictions and the indulgence in reactions that are disproportionately small in comparison to what is really being sacrificed for them. Curiously—and a major theme in my own work over decades—the casual association of emotions to love is part of the insanity in all this.
True balance, and harmony, necessitates finding a way to override the addictive, reactive emotions that are the fabric of one’s subjective illusion, and discover emotions that correspond to actuality.
On the high-end spectrum of emotions, which are innately connected to intuition and direct comprehension as well as imagination and creativity, meaning true empathy and knowledge, appreciative realization, transformation and invention, one finds a richer and more voluptuous combination of experience. Unfortunately, to “get there,” one has to be willing to sacrifice what is known for what is not.
The experience of frustration comes from the separation we impose between our yearning and our fear. Generally, we yearn for that which we fear, or at least fear the unknown (mystery, and therefore and paradoxically, truth) that will be caused through the pursuit of yearning. The more the separation between these two, yearning and fear, the more frustration if you are conscious, or the more neurosis if you are not (literally, “I can’t stand the frustration, I’m going crazy”).
This is the law of nature that every person who is born has to go through certain kind of painful experiences. Thepainful issues keep coming throughout life.As you progress on the spiritual path their impact become lesser and lesser and finally a stage would come where you can achieve liberation from Stress and unhappiness forever.-Subodh Gupta author, "Stress Management a Holistic Approach -5 steps Plan".
During the time of stress, the “fight-or-flight” response is on and the self-repair mechanism is disabled. It is then when we say that the immunity of the body goes down and the body is exposed to the risk for disease. Meditation activates relaxation, when the sympathetic nervous system is turned off and the parasympathetic nervous system is turned on, and natural healing starts.
Redefine Yourself will help you overcome the obstacles that have plagued your life. You will incorporate new adaptive strategies that will not only change your life, but also positively impact those people around you. You will truly redefine yourself and achieve the happiness you’ve always wanted. You might just achieve that long list of other wants too.
Life is full of issues no matter what social status you enjoy in society, only the nature of issue would be different. You solve one issue, other would come and they would be keep on coming till you are alive. This is a reality and nobody can escape from this truth.-Subodh Gupta author, "Stress Management a Holistic Approach -5 steps Plan".
If you focus your mind on problem, the problem would become bigger and bigger and you get into the circle of worrying and then your mind gives you the false impression that the problem is very big and mind than start multiplying your worries without any actual basis and you see no way of coming out of it. To come out of the problems you need to focus on solutions. -Subodh Gupta author, "Stress Management a Holistic Approach -5 steps Plan".
Nothing happens on its own, you have to make things happen. If you really want to come out of your stressful situation than you need to take action. Unless you stand up for yourself and take action, the problem is not going to get away. Let fear of failure shouldn't stop you from taking action.-Subodh Gupta, author "Stress Management A holistic approach-5 Steps Plan".
Nothing is permanent in this world. Everything is changing, so no matter what problem or issue you are having inyour life at the moment, it would also change sooner or later but of course you need to take positive action too.-Subodh Gupta author, "Stress Management a Holistic Approach -5 steps Plan".
You are here and you can’t escape it. Thoughts about why you came to be here and a poor-me mentality will not help you to resolve the situation. You cannot avoid being here now, in this present moment, in this unfortunate predicament. Your choices, lack of choices, or accidental events, have led you to this moment. That cannot be changed no matter how much you think about it. The only things that can be changed in this present moment are your thoughts and actions right now. Take a deep breath and totally accept this moment.
Humankind devotes much of its collective energy to managing personal and institutional anxiety and dealing with unsuccessful efforts of its civilians to cope with the tides of shifting social and economic conditions. Every city corridor houses downtrodden citizens whom have given up on life, the dopers, smoke hounds, crack heads, and unrepentant drunkards whom spend their days pushing shopping carts and their nights sleeping in gutters. In marked contrast to these filthy and wretched souls whom inhabit the skid row of every city’s streets, all animals display an admirable state of hygiene and a zest for life. Except for poor critters sentenced to live confined in a zoo and domestic animals held captives in deplorable harvesting pens, all animals live a carefree existence that is preferable to living off stress sandwiches of modern humankind.
People complain about cold weather during winter, about hot weather during summer and about rain in rainyseason. People who are single are depressed that they are single, those who are married think that singlesare having more fun, people with darker skin want to get fair skin, people with white skin want tanning and the list never ends. Sometimes I think what wouldhappen to people’s life if you take their complaining habit out of their life? -Subodh Gupta author, "Stress Management a Holistic Approach-5 Steps Plan
Most dissociative parts influence your experience from the inside rather than exert complete control, that is, through passive influence.*In fact, many parts never take complete control of a person, but are only experienced internally. *Frequent switching may be a sign of severe stress and inner conflict in most individuals.
Stress is a natural and normal part of being alive. Stress-free promises set people up for failure. Even when used with good intentions and accompanied by relevant and beneficial ideas and practices, the use of the words stress-free is still ill advised because the approach is infused with an erroneous idea that will never come to fruition. The stress-free idea has become a significant hurdle on the path to real stress management, which is the balance between using stress productively and relieving harmful stress symptoms.
Stress-free moments certainly exist, but that is the extent of it. People, who have bought into the idea of a stress-free life, believe they should be happy and positive all the time. They have been sold a damaging falsehood. As the first sentence in M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled famously said: “Life is difficult.” Learning to deal effectively with life’s difficulties, learning to manage the inevitable stress of life is attainable, while eliminating stress is not.
Evolution has geared the human stress response to last about thirty seconds. It's enough time to facilitate fight or flight. Evolution has not adapted our brains or bodies to handle weeks or months of prolonged stress.
The worst possible approach to a problem is waiting until it becomes overwhelming or irreversible, and that is exactly what many people do. They put dealing with stress on the backburner until they start to experience all the worst symptoms of stress, and by then, it may be too late!
If you have ever procrastinated and then found yourself energized to complete a task at the last minute, then you have used the beneficial aspect of the fight or flight response (not the procrastinating part, but the energizing part). You see, with all its negative long term effects, the fight or flight response still gives us energy, and if we know how to use that energy, then stress is potentially good, at least in the short term.
Habits equal autopilot. Take brushing your teeth for example. Once that becomes a habit, you don’t have to write positive affirmations or remind yourself constantly to brush your teeth. It is simply a habitual part of what you do every day. That is why I emphasize the five habits of stress management, not the five rules or the five goals. If you make these five habits an essential part of your life, then you will be able to manage stress effectively.
Everyone knows that a quick-fix usually doesn’t work, yet we have all been sold on the idea time and time again. Most of us would like to believe in miracle drugs and fast relief. The truth is that most of the quick fixes for stress focus on temporary relief from tension or pain. Temporary, as in, the problem will return with a vengeance. This doesn’t mean we should never take drugs to alleviate tension or pain, it just means that taking drugs is not a viable permanent solution; it’s just a temporary relief.