Breaking the Patterns of Stress
The world can often seem to be a very stressful place to live. We’re surrounded by constant reminders of life’s uncertainties and many of the situations we confront on a daily basis leave us feeling powerless and out of control. Do you ever have the feeling that you just can’t help getting stressed? Does your blood pressure increase and you start to panic and fret every time you encounter a problem? Have you ever wondered if your stress response might just be a bad habit? An involuntary knee-jerk reaction that’s slowly grown and developed over the years?
It’s an intriguing set of questions. If we take the view that the way we react to stress is largely a habit, then we can also learn to free ourselves from this potentially damaging behaviour and start to enjoy life on a whole new level.
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
-?????? William James
You might be surprised to discover that you can exercise much greater control over your reactions than you suspected. It’s time to look more closely at this intriguing problem and consider the alternatives.
When you’re looking for examples of how the stress addiction shows up, it’s often easier to consider how other people behave rather than the way that you typically react to life’s daily round of challenges. You probably know individuals who seem to create chaos out of thin air. These are the people who invariably create problems and difficulties and stress even when there’s no reason to be anxious or afraid. They provide a very useful, though often disturbing, example of what happens when people become conditioned to over-react to every situation and leave a trail of fear, stress and disturbance in their wake.
Even when life is sailing along quite smoothly and calmly with everything moving along in a perfectly harmonious manner, they manufacture some absurd crisis out of nowhere that they can use to justify their outbursts of stress, anger, panic and a whirlwind of chaos.
It’s very helpful to remember that we are social creatures. Naturally, therefore, this kind of behaviour can prove infectious. People find it very challenging to remain calm and cantered when someone’s running around in full-blown panic mode. We assume there must be a real threat or problem that’s causing the disturbance and we instinctively prepare ourselves to confront the danger.
But what if it’s really just a habit? What if this addiction to stress is similar to other addictive behaviours? Can we really learn to free ourselves from such a deeply-ingrained habit?
Fortunately, the answer is - “Yes, we most certainly can.”
When you find yourself stressed, ask yourself one question:
Will this matter in 5 years from now?
If yes, then do something about the situation. If no, then let it go.
-?????? Catherine Pulsifer
One of the great advances in behavioural therapy has been the recognition that the more often that we stop and question our reactions and our emotional responses, the more we engage our higher brain function.
And why is this important?
The answer is intriguing. As we stop to consider our actions, we introduce changes into the way our brains function. That’s right. The stress response, which is largely located in our ancient limbic system, is connected to the pre-frontal cortex. One of the fascinating consequences of this connection is that when we stop to think and analyse our reactions, the stress response is lowered as the higher brain function is engaged.
So, instead of over-reacting, we can learn to pause for a moment and ask ourselves a few simple questions:
“What if I remain calm?”
“What if I breathe deeply and think about the best way to handle this situation?”
“What if I choose to remain relaxed, focused and collected?”
This simple mechanism can become the foundation for a whole set of new empowering behaviours. We can learn to switch off the stress habit and use our higher brain function to access our creativity.
This is a much healthier way to deal with the world and a superb technique for taking control of our unhealthy behaviours.
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Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
-?????? Marcus Aurelius
It may seem like a very simple method for re-calibrating your perspective but the underlying dynamics are very powerful and very reliable. Remember how easy it is to pause and ask yourself that all-important “What if …?” question. Turn your attention away from the stress habit and focus on alternative ways of reacting. Feel the surge in your confidence as you take a firm grip of your habits and reactions. The best time to experience this wonderful new dynamic in personal stress mastery is right now. Begin the process today and notice how incredibly quickly you can shift from the old state of anxiety to a beautiful state of calm.
If you found this idea useful and recognise the importance of taking better control of your life, feel free to share the post and encourage your family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances to discover the incredible power of a happier, stress-free and more fulfilling life. Help everyone to enjoy greater levels of freedom, happiness and success in all areas of their lives.
Together, we really can make the world a better place to share.
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