What is your stressful habit?
Do you know?
Do you have doubt in yourself and the future?
Do you have fear about certain things?
What do you worry about?
If you have doubt, fear, or worry, this kind of reaction, is causing stress.
Maybe you worry how you are going to pay the bills. Maybe you worry about if you will make it in school, or get a job. Maybe you worry about your health or beauty. Maybe you worry about your family. Maybe you worry about your relationship.
Our thoughts of doubt, fear, or worry cause us stress and therefore, these reactions are our stressful habits. Whatever we worry about specifically, is our stressor.
What is a stressor? A stressor is whatever stresses us out.
Everyone's stressor is different. While finances may stress one person out, health may stress another.
So, how do we discover our stressful habits? My first suggestion is to notice what you have doubt, fear, or worry over. Then, know that it is our reaction to this particular stressor that causes our stress.
When I was a young, single Mother, I use to worry about my bills, all the time. I didn't make very much money, I always paid my bills, but I lived pay check to pay check and I had very little money. This worry consumed me so much that I would cry at night and be on my knees praying to the Lord in the midst of severe anxiety, over money.
My stressful habits were that I worried about money, I had no hope or faith in myself, and I let this worry consume me.
In order to change these stressful habits, I needed to know that whatever happened, I could handle it. The doubt, fear, and worry came from a thought process of the inability to handle what may come my way and lack of faith in myself to create a better future. In other words, I didn't see how things were going to get better but they did. I went to school, got my degrees, and made more money, he he he...I can giggle now but boy was I consumed back then.
My stressor was finances, or lack of, and my stressful habits were the way I thought about my situation, and the actions, or lack of, that I took towards a better future.
When I was a young, single Mother, I use to worry about my bills, all the time. I didn't make very much money, I always paid my bills, but I lived pay check to pay check and I had very little money. This worry consumed me so much that I would cry at night and be on my knees praying to the Lord in the midst of severe anxiety, over money.
My stressful habits were that I worried about money, I had no hope or faith in myself, and I let this worry consume me.
In order to change these stressful habits, I needed to know that whatever happened, I could handle it. The doubt, fear, and worry came from a thought process of the inability to handle what may come my way and lack of faith in myself to create a better future. In other words, I didn't see how things were going to get better but they did. I went to school, got my degrees, and made more money, he he he...I can giggle now but boy was I consumed back then.
My stressor was finances, or lack of, and my stressful habits were the way I thought about my situation, and the actions, or lack of, that I took towards a better future.
In order to discover and eliminate our stressful habits we must discover what stresses us out, what our defeating thought process is about that particular stressor, create solutions to our dilemmas, and change our mind and actions to more positive and productive ones. Most of all, we must know that we can handle it because we don't really have a choice. Actually, we do have a choice, we can choose to believe we can handle it or we can choose to believe that we can't handle it.
Believe you and me, we can handle it.
So, lets start there, knowing we can handle it, no matter what.
Have fun and be playful!
Thank you for all of the emails. I am grateful for you.
Elizabeth Stanfill
destressyourself.com
elizabeth@destressyourself.comElizabeth Stanfill
destressyourself.com
