What S-T-R-E-S-S will do, and is now doing, to YOU

Stress will age you faster! Stress will lower your immune system! Stress will ruin your life and happiness!

Headaches, abdominal pain, acne, wrinkles, infections, sleepless and restless nights, worry, depression and anxiety…and many more ailments like these can be induced by uncontrolled stress in your life.

To control stress and live your life to the fullest, there are certain principles YOU must COME to terms with.

They are as follows:

1) You cannot, and will not be ABLE to, please everybody no what matter what you say, do and/or think. Even then, you cannot please some people all the time anyway. So, why even sweat it then? You are NOT the anointed savior to any one! You are certainly not God! However, while you should not be a "pleaser of folk," you have to be kind and considerate towards others.

(2) You must identify the stress triggers in your life, and learn to cope with and/or, better still, overcome them. Now, I have a secret for you: we all have stress in our lives! We all have problems and crises (of various proportions) to deal with…bills, family conflict, relationships, finances, work, etc. That is part of the deal of living here on earth. You should KNOW what your specific triggers to stress are, avoid pulling or activating them—and replacing those triggers with activities that build and edify you. Go take a nature walk. Drive to the beach, and walk on the shore and listen to the sea gulls chatter. Take some paper and draw an evening landscape. Pray and meditate.

3) You cannot afford to toss in bed, go sleepless with worry and not eat. You also should not take on drinking and abusing drugs to make you “feel better” either. Those are toxic remedies to your mind and body! Worrying about anything solves nothing. It only throws you into greater mental anguish. Not eating, or even participating in over-indulgence, does nothing but mask the real issues eating inside you. If you are constantly depressed, you must seek help. Underlying depression/anxiety is not made any better with concomitant stress. If anything, stress makes you go deeper in your cocoon of depression. Alcohol and substance abuse will not cure stress either. Substance abuse will make underlying depression worse. Look at the celebrities who commit suicide…they have tried the alcohol and substance path and have fallen flat on their faces. Learn from those mistakes. Seek professional help, see your pastor and find healthy avenues to de-stress, e.g. walking, exercising, etc.

4) You cannot postpone the inevitable. Are you holding onto a job that is ”killing you” and which you hate--because you put off going to school...and can’t seem to find anything better out there? Are you in a toxic and loveless relationship that is strangling you? Are you being taken advantage of? Well, you have to ACT!! “A” is for Action plan. You must develop an Action plan. A failure to plan is tantamount to a plan to fail. “C” is for commitment. You must commit to doing what is needed to get you to the specific goal(s) contained in your Action plan. If you have to go to school to meet your goals in your action plan, then do it…and don’t look back. “T” is for turn the page and move on. When you do that, don’t harbor regrets. The past is money spent. It is gone. Today is cash in hand. Spend it wisely.

5) You cannot feel sorry for yourself. If you think you have it bad, go visit the local hospital. Go to the children’s cancer ward, and watch the kids who have lived a few years in life, on IV medications almost all their lives, run around, laugh and play. Oh, you have it rough? Go to the Veterans Hospital and see the amputees try and relearn to walk, or the brave men and women (who served) deal with traumatic brain injury and burn injuries. You get the point…If you think your problem is large, well, I have news for you: someone else has an even larger problem. Feeling sorry for yourself won’t help you. It will only give you a good but poorly attended self-pity party. Get up and do something about your situation. Get a pet. Volunteer at the local soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister to a child without a sibling. Giving of yourself will reap rewards of making you feel connected and involved in something else other than you—something larger than just YOU.

Life is too short. Don’t let stress age you faster and prematurely. Don’t let stress lower your immune system! Don’t let stress ruin your life and happiness!