Alleviating Stress

Can stress possibly have any beneficial value to us?

Yes it can. It can be a teacher of the highest order, when you respond to it in an appropriate manner.

There are different types of stress. There is the stress that comes in the wake of a life threatening situation, there is the stress of accepting responsibility for the lives of others, there is self-induced stress caused by conflicting desires between people, and there is imaginary stress caused my uncontrolled mind imaginings.

How can stress be useful to us?

Simply put, all things are either leading you closer to the love and joy you are seeking, or,…they are leading you further away.

Stress is an emotional signal from your higher self that, you are moving away from your highest good. The remedy then, is to reaffirm your priorities and to head out once again in the direction of your joy.

Of course, this is the utopian version of what really happens. In actual fact, reality occurs more like this: Stress is the “pebble” in your shoe in that, when you first notice it, it annoys you but you tolerate it. Later, as it’s annoyance level increases because of the discomfort it is creating, it begins to draw more and more of your focus, until such time as you decide this stupid, and you stop and remove it from your shoe.

Prior to this point, the annoyance and discomfort were not of the level needed to generate any constructive action on your part. In simplistic terms, it was far simpler and easier to live with the problem, than to implement a creative solution.

This is what happens with regards to the stress that you experience in life. People dislike change, and conflict, and often feel bound to, or trapped in a particular situation, with no way to easily extricate themselves, without causing their whole life to be turned upside down.

Stress then, is more accurately described as the “tension” that exists between what you have, and what you want, in the same way that the Earths orbit is the example of the tension that exists because of the Earth’s centrifugal force of orbital rotation, countering the suns gravitational pull.

When certain forces obtain the upper hand, then change makes it possible for stress to become alleviated. Thus, when you reach a point where you can no longer tolerate a situation, then you move into action to change things. That time between the initial discomfort, and the eventual change is that “tension” that we call stress.

Yet wouldn’t it make far more sense to make your changes when you first start to feel discomfort? Why agonize over something for months years or decades? What a waste of energy.

Stress could be classified as, being all the factors that are not in alignment with the way that you believe the world, and people should behave. Potential stress then, is everything that lies outside of your belief system. I’m sure that you can see the potential for the amount of stress that can create.

In closing here are a few time-honored sayings, with regard to stress.

“Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

“Will this really matter in five or ten years?” and,…(a personal one of my own).

“Don’t take the responsibility of the world on your shoulders, without the control that goes with it.”

So in closing, let me say that most people have enough genuine concerns of their own, without having to import the problems of other people into their life.