Are You Ready For Another Fun Year of STRESS?

Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope that you were all able to celebrate the joy of the season. The festive season is a great way to celebrate the end of a busy year. I find that there is a certain magic around that time of the year, it can raise spirits, and reassures your stressed-out mind that you’ve done good, and that things can only get better. And so, after all the lightness of December, are you ready for another busy year which will leave you bowed down with stress? What a wonderful prospect.

In 1997, stress led to my burning out, crashing my car, and changing my life in one respect for the worst, and in another, the very best.

It was the worst because I can no longer accept everything that society, convention, luck, and all that jazz would have us believe. Instead of being conditioned to believe and accept this that and the other, I question my mind before I’m prepared to accept something. For example, if I’m working hard and under pressure, then it naturally follows that I must be stressed. Really!!! And why is that?

Your mind can be your most powerful friend, if you treat it right. Don’t and you will regret it.

Thanks to my crash and subsequent health issues, I’ve had to look for a different for a different way of moving through life. Thanks to pursuing opportunity and asking questions of my self, I found my way to personal development. By continually working on my education, by providing my mind with the stimulation that it needs, I was reminded of something important that I had forgotten. That being that my mind is my mind.

I know, who would have thunk it. Our mind is our own. Maybe that’s because it’s our mind. Our mind isn’t society’s, it doesn’t belong to convention, and it most certainly belong to convention, luck, and all that jazz. Our mind is our own. And because our mind is our own, we have the power to think as we wish to think, and we have the power to write the narrative of our life.

Because we control how our mind thinks, we can choose how circumstance affects us.

In livelier days I was a hockey goalkeeper. When my team were being anti-social and keeping the ball to themselves, I would take a stroll up to the halfway line. And whilst I wasn’t exactly, overtly encouraging the opposition to give me something to do, I did have some great races back to my goal. I’m not completely against stress, as a wee bit can keep you on your toes, it’s the bad stuff, the stuff that can kill, that’s what I’m against!

If you don’t want to get yourself stressed, then don’t. I have yet to come across anything that can dissuade me from my belief that stress is a personal choice, one that doesn’t have to be made. Well, unless you want to get stressed that is?

My father was in the R.A.F. One of his postings took him to R.A.F Akrotiri in Cyprus. Once he alighted the steps from the aircraft bringing him in, he was handed a Sten gun and spent the next 6 months alternating 24-hour guard duty, with a full days work. In this enlightened day and age, I rather fear that anyone asked to do similar would get rather stressed. Back in the fifties, my father and his comrades had a job to do, so they got on with it.

I’ve been through periods of great stress, I think that I might even have had a mental breakdown. None of that is recent, it all happened prior to my building a more positive relationship with my mind. With that positive relationship comes an awareness of when thing aren’t quite right, or when some negativity is trying to slither its way in. Rather than accept it, when you are aware of an issue, both you and your mind know that it needs dealing with, NOW!!!

If you allow negativity into your mind unchecked then it will take root. The longer that you give negativity space in your mind, the more it will flourish, and the more that it flourishes, the worse things become for you. Until I understood this, my mind could be rather an unpleasant place to be. Fortunately for me, I didn’t listen and respond to some of the darker tides within my mind, otherwise, I doubt that I would be sitting at my keyboard writing this article.

In dealing with stress and all irritants of that ilk, I find that there is a short, a medium, and a long-term way to deal with these intrusions.

The short-term is easy. When some negativity tries to slither into your mind, you fight back with positive thoughts. Have you ever tried to feel miserable when you’re feeling good about yourself? If it’s being a wee bit awkward, then start thinking funny thoughts. There is now way that you can feel miserable if you are walking about with a dirty great grin on your face.

The medium approach does require some effort on your part, but I find that it’s more than worth it. In-order-to build a good relationship with your mind, you are going to have to provide it with the stimulus that it needs to flourish.

What stimulus will your mind respond to? Education is a fantabulous way to open locked doors in your mind and grow your potential. It could be personal development, whatever you’re studying at school, college or work, it could be some other interest. Play a sport, exercise, even if it’s just going for a walk. Thanks to Amazon, you can write and publish books. You could set up an online business. Listen to music, especially classical. Go to museum’s, art galleries, concerts. Read books, it doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or non-fiction. Pursue your interests. Talk to people and volunteer your time.

What matters is that you don’t rely on artificial stimulation where everything is done for you, and there’s nothing for your mind to do. T.V is a good example of this. When you’re watching a program, what is there for your mind to do? It doesn’t have to create the characters, it doesn’t have to create the world in which the program happens. All that it can do is watch.

And I agree, sometimes you will be engaged in what you see, but not always, and when that happens, your mind will switch off. Compare that with reading a good book. Let’s say that you’re reading a novel. Your mind has to do everything that the T.V does for you, it becomes engaged and you become an active participant.

The long-term approach is what I call the Great Dream. And before you ask, I have yet to find a way that adequately describes what it is, and what it means to us. What I can say is that we all have one, it’s in all of us, you just have to find a way to find it. The Great Dream is the absolute, crazy, world-changing, how am I ever going to achieve this, moonshot.

When searching for your Great Dream, don’t just reach for the stars, that’s nowhere near ambitious enough! I need you to dream to the edge of the universe and beyond!

My Great Dream is a modest wee thing. I will reach out to 1 billion people and open their minds to their vast potential. I suspect that it will keep me going for the rest of my days, and in doing so, it gives me a future that will grow. I have a lot to do, a lot to experience, and a lot to learn. Maybe because of what it means to me, I find that my Great Dream both comforts me and cheers me on.

When compared with your Great Dream, any negativity that’s annoying you gets swept away in a cleansing breeze.

So, my friend. If you put into action what I’ve given you, your stress levels are going to fade. Please remember, where’s the point in getting stressed if you don’t want to. Build that relationship with your mind so that your mind works for you, not against you.

One final thought. You are infinitely greater than your mind allows you to believe… So, what are YOU going to do about it?

?

?

?