5 quick stress busters

Stress is fast becoming the biggest health problem in modern societies. Financial pressures, work pressures, family pressures – so much to do so little time to do it all! Here’s five quick ways to ease the pressure and relieve stress:

1. Make time to switch off from the daily trials and tribulations and relax for at least one hour every day. Just shut the world out and do something you enjoy. Reading, playing a musical instrument, taking a relaxing bath with music and candles (and maybe a glass of wine) are all great ways to unwind and will be extremely beneficial to your mental health.

2. If you’re dealing with a stressful situation and you have a lot on your plate then it can be very hard to find solutions. You’re caught up in the midst of a sandstorm and it is very difficult to see the way out. A good idea is to get some distance from your problems so you can gather your thoughts. If possible, take a day or even a weekend away from your usual surroundings, somewhere peaceful, and relax. Take a journal along so you can jot down any ideas. Distance away from problems can bring clarity and by relaxing, you’ll be calmer and solutions will come far easier than when you’re in the heat of battle.

3. One of the reasons people become stressed is because they are facing a change or even a number of changes to their lives. Change is a constant in life and refusing to accept change can cause stress levels to soar. When you are faced with a change, try to find the positives associated with change and embrace change instead of resisting it. Every change presents an opportunity for you to grow and there are always positives to find in even the most trying of circumstances. Change doesn’t bring stress, it’s all about how you react to change and if you react in a negative way, you will do yourself no end of harm.

4. There always seems to be an endless list of jobs that need doing: repairs around the home, paperwork, car maintenance, throwing out junk, cleaning the patio, weeding the garden – on and on and on! The more we put them off, the more the list grows and the more they contribute to your stress levels. So make a list of all of these chores and then schedule something I call a “Blitz Day”. On this day, you will rise early and spend the whole day sorting out each of these jobs. Take few breaks and only have a quick bite at lunchtime and just blitz through these irritating but necessary tasks. This will get rid of them, you’ll lower the stress they cause but more importantly, you’ll realize just how effective and industrious you can be when you apply the full force of your will to accomplish things.

5. Treat yourself to a pamper day. This is a day where you escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday living and enjoy some stress-free time. You’ll also feel great and give your well being a huge boost. On this day, have a light workout, a swim, a sauna, a Jacuzzi, a steam room. A massage would be nice and if you have access to one, a Turkish baths will give you an invigorating experience. Try to do this at least once a month, it is an excellent stress-buster.

The 5 Tips here will help you to significantly reduce your stress levels but they’ll only work for you if you put them into action. Give them a go – you’ll be amazed at the results!

Lucid dreaming

Lucid dreaming is simply being aware that you are dreaming while you are in a dream. Learning how to do lucid dreaming intentionally is a personal growth tool. It may help you resolve personal problems because you’re able to consciously take an active role in your dreams. It can also be a lot of fun!

Lucid dreaming is a challenging art to master, but there are steps that can be taken to help you achieve the state.

As you go to sleep, use the suggestion: “As I am dreaming tonight, I will realize I am dreaming” (use your own words).

It’s important to do this as you are drifting off to sleep, but you can do it throughout the day as well. Sometimes as you are making this suggestion you may actually have a memory of a previous dream come to mind! Your attitude should be one of positive expectation, but gentle inviting rather than insisting or applying any type of pressure or anxiety.

Next, work on remembering your dreams after you wake up. By getting the mind used to remembering your dreams, you are creating a more deliberate connection of awareness between the conscious and unconscious mind. In fact, it’s possible that you may already be having lucid dreams, but you aren’t remembering them!

The final step is to attempt to stay in the twilight sleep state for as long as possible upon awakening. You will often have a dream just before you awake in the morning so if you can stay still and keep your eyes closed, you may be able to enter back into the dream, but with more conscious awareness – thus creating a type of lucid dream as you balance between the sleeping and waking states.

A common problem some people encounter with lucid dreaming is that they wake up as soon as they realize they’re dreaming. This is because the work of making conscious choices while sleeping causes the conscious mind is rise from its slumber, thus arousing the wakening state.

This can be overcome with practice, but there is a technique that can help. Before you go to sleep, plan on what you will do in your lucid dreams. This removes an element of conscious choice during your dreams, which may help you stay in the dream state.

Great discovery helps you gain energy

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"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."
– Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist

When we are tired, it is hard to communicate. Our thinking cells don’t function and even if we try to continue, the effort and results will be mediocre at best.

It is important to realize that our energy levels are affected by the state of our emotions. And our emotions are a result of our perceptions on our outlook on the events of our lives. (Reread that if needed and let it sink in)

Emotional energy is the preconception we have for everything. You see we can get into assumptions on how thing are going and how they will turn out. If we believe that things will turn out badly, we act in accordance to that belief. The reverse is also true.

Author Mira Kirshenbaum, author of THE EMOTIONAL ENERGY FACTOR wrote about how our emotions dictate our energy level.

"It is estimated that a whopping 70% of our energy comes from our emotional state of mind as apposed to the food we eat or the exercise that we do."

Our positive emotions of love, joy, excitement, compassion, create energy within us. These are the driving forces that can help us excel in our accomplishments. They enable us to create and implement more ideas and inspire us to do more. They attract other successful people to us and radiate potential.

Whereas negative emotions such as anger, hatred, fear, worry anxiety etc. drain us of our energy. They literately zap and drain us of our abilities to change whatever we do not like. They can stop us in our tracks from moving forward. They leave us with little more energy then to just sit and complain about the world rather than being part of the change. AND, this attracts other complainers with little or no energy.

To increase your emotional energy, you need to look at two things.

1. Know what it is that drains you; (learn to avoid them)

• a. Life situations


• b. Toxic people


• c. Habits of worry, guilt, fear, indecision, envy


• d. Unfinished business; whether its cleaning, paper work or clearing the air



2. Know what it is that fills you (and give yourself more)

• a. Prayer


• b. Meditation


• c. Hobbies


• d. Walks or reading

Several authors from different backgrounds have written on the benefits of prayer and meditation. They have pointed out how tests have shown that people who take care of their souls have found the secret of high voltage people.

This does not mean attending church once a week and believing that, that is all there is. It is about connecting at the level of your being, living your truth and connecting with your higher power.

They state that there is a positive cycle that goes like this:
Prayer gives emotional energy = Emotional energy helps you take action
= Actions makes good things happen

Greg Braden explains that scientific experiments show that time is not linear (From the Isaiah Effect), that besides past, present, & future, it also has depth. The depth consists of all possible prayers. Essentially, all of our prayers have been answered and we activate the ones that we live through our feelings. Through this, we create our reality; the choice through feelings connects the web of creation with all of the energy and matter of the Universe.

This message is being repeated over and over by countless authours, speakers, philosophers and quantum physicists that feelings and emotions have been the missing key ingredient in achieving what we desire. In past, we have become good at getting what we don’t want, because many people only use feelings when it comes to be angry, fearful, mad or anxious.
Where as if we can use positive emotion energy when thinking about what we do want, we will attract the life we desire. Moreover, we will have the energy to go after it.

So ask yourself, where is my emotional energy, and what is it doing to me?

"Your thoughts are like a boomerang. Your judgments and unforgiving thoughts will most certainly return and whack you in the back of the head."
From, Smile for No Good Reason
by Lee L. Jampolsky, Ph. D.

Guilt and self-destructive behaviors

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Do you ever wonder if your parents graduated magna cum laude from Guilt University? Do you ever suspect that they majored in Suffering with a minor in Acting Out of Control? All the while earning high grades for other maneuvers that make you feel guilty instantly? I’m making light of something serious to make a point. That point is that we keep many of these guilt-provoking techniques in a place deep within us that affects our outlook, self-worth and future behavior.

Imagine a forest alive with trees that are growing taller year by year. Then, one day, a woodsman comes in, ax in hand and swinging hard. The damage he does to the health of the forest is extreme, harsh, and long-term. Now think about these statements, some of which may sound familiar: “How could you do this to me?” WHACK! “Some day you’ll realize what I’ve done for you!” WHACK! “I hope your children do to you what you’ve done to me!” TIMBER!

Just as the trees fall to the woodman’s ax, so does your ego under the blows of your parent’s comments. And their damage on you is just as extreme, harsh and long term. But just as the forest comes back to good health over time, so can you come back to your own state of health and happiness.

Communication takes many forms and so does manipulation. We’ve just touched on the verbal kinds of guilt-provoking examples, what about their nonverbal counterparts? Pouting. Withdrawing. Icy stares. Cold shoulders. Helpless sobbing. Forlorn looks. If all this drama is directed toward one small child, how could he or she not be affected?

Manipulation: Two New Varieties, Same Old Guilt

Ever experience the Knife Twist? How about the Bludgeon? Both bring you to the same place—guilt. Let’s start with the parent who manipulates via “knife twisting.” For the child whose parents want him or her to be excessively devoted to them, no matter how unpleasant it is, here’s what may be heard around the dinner table: “I’m so miserable without you,” or “How could you be so selfish and so inconsiderate of me?” or “After all I’ve sacrificed for you” (note this one may be accompanied by one of the already mentioned nonverbal “forlorn looks”). What’s the effect of all this knife twisting? Maybe your fear of having to be too devoted will cause you to be afraid of close relationships and so your search for love will never end well. In the chapter “Why Can’t I Fall in Love and Stay in Love,” you’ll read stories of people whose relationships were damaged by just this issue.

Let’s continue with our other style of guilt-provoking manipulation—the Bludgeon. An example of this type is found when you act independently of your authoritarian parent and he or she loses control, explodes in anger, and screams at you because you weren’t obedient or submissive enough. What’s the effect of bludgeoning? In the chapter “Why Am I Fat and Why Can’t I Lose Weight?” you’ll read about Alice, who rebelled against her controlling parents by getting fat and staying that way.

Whether it’s a slowly twisting knife, a bludgeoning from a hammer, an icy stare or a cold shoulder, the effect of these over-emotional displays of exaggerated suffering is the same—to manipulate you to change a normal behavior or abandon a normal goal. But why would you change what is normal and acceptable? Because you feel so guilty for inflicting such terrible pain, you’ll conform to their personality flaws no matter how resentful or damaging that may be for your life.

The Stranger at the Party

As a child, it’s hard to imagine that you have the power to inflict so much damage on your parents or siblings just by being yourself and doing the normal things that children do. But because they constantly act so wounded, it’s difficult for you to be unaffected by their guilt-provoking behavior. Now think about this: If you had a brief encounter with an unpleasant stranger at a cocktail party, would you assume then that you were responsible for his offensive behavior? Or would you say to yourself, or to a friend, “What’s up with him?” Chances are you’d know that if that person behaved badly, it wasn’t your fault. But with your parent or sibling, you’ve been blamed for their unhappiness over a long, long time and you’ve been burdened by long-lasting feelings of (unconscious) guilt. Why is it so difficult to avoid feeling guilty toward your parents when you probably wouldn’t blame yourself for the badly behaving stranger?

The Gods Must Be Angry

As children, we view our parents in the same way that members of a primitive tribe view their gods. When the gods are angry, the heavens erupt and earthquakes, floods, and droughts occur. Tribal elders know for certain that the gods must be appeased. Amends must be made for hurting the gods. With a lack of knowledge about the causes of the natural disasters it experiences, the tribe assumes that it has angered the gods of nature. And so by altering its behavior through prayer, performing rituals and sacrifices, the tribe believes it can placate the offended gods and so alleviate the punishment. But in altering its behavior in order to amend and atone, the tribe may make accommodations even if they’re detrimental to its well-being—for instance, sacrificing a cow even if there’s a shortage of cows.

In the same way, as a child you assumed that your behavior was responsible for provoking your parents. Though this assumption was often just a general feeling and not clearly well thought out, it was based on real experiences with siblings or parents who constantly acted hurt, threatened, or angered by your normal behaviors. Remember the mother in the joke at the beginning of the chapter—the one who made her son feel guilty about not paying enough attention to her? Have you ever been in a similar situation? If so, what did you do? Did you act like the member of the indigenous tribe and make sacrifices to appease your gods (okay, parents)? Did you change something normal in yourself in order to not hurt them again? Was the result that you resented yourself for appeasing your parents at your own expense? If so, your resentment will also have you trapped in self-defeating responses as you go through life. What might that look like? You might rebel against the mother in the joke and become unresponsive to anyone who wants your interest. Or, in response to a controlling parent, you might become stubborn, defiant, and disagreeable, no matter how severe the cost is to you. Throughout your life these qualities will undermine your relationships with others and also your goals.

Congratulations, You’ve Been Hired by Mystery Firm X

Changing to keep our parents happy, or at least to not make them angry, is
something you may have tried while growing up. But did you know exactly what you were changing and why? And if you didn’t, did you still try to change anyway?

Compare your situation to this one and see if it helps put it all in perspective for you. You’ve been job-hunting for a while and now at last your search is over. You’ve landed a job. Only problem is, you don’t know what the job entails, what is expected of you, and what the requirements actually are. One day you walk into work and your boss is angry with you and you don’t know why. You find yourself thinking, “What did I do?” “Was it the way I handled report A, was it the way I dealt with situation B, or maybe it was how I dealt with customer C?” You decide which situation you think it was and then you make what you think is the appropriate change. Next time, you think (and hope) it will be different. Your boss will have nothing to be angry about.

You’ve taken care of the problem. Does that make sense to you? Changing but not knowing what you did wrong or fully understanding the situation before you start to make the change? If you don’t know what the problem is, how can you possibly be expected to fix it? To an adult this probably doesn’t make sense, does it? But this is what we, as kids, do. Right or wrong, sense or nonsense, we try to change to make sure our parents (or other siblings) won’t be angry or hurt. We’re always trying to keep those “gods” of ours happy so they don’t get angry.