Monday, May 7, 2012

THE ABC'S OF DESTRESSING

Hello my friend!  How are you this Monday mornin'?  Did you have a lovely weekend?  I am doing grrreat!  And I had a perfect weekend.  On Saturday, I had a lovely lunch with my Dad, Mom, and Son.  On Sunday, I attended church, which was super duper fantastic, and I feel recharged, as I do every week.

This morning, after my meditation, I was thinking about the ABC's of destressing because when people come to me for help, they truly just need the basics of destressing so that they can move forward.  So, here is what I got...

A...  Awareness is key!  I am talking about awareness of yourself, awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions.  Your actions are either helping you or hurting you.  We are living life through habitual behavior, which may be beneficial behavior or detrimental.  Are you thinking thoughts of faith in life, others, and yourself, which is beneficial, or are you thinking thoughts of doubt, fear, and worry concerning life, others, and yourself, which is detrimental?  Are you experiencing positive feelings like happiness, energy, and vitality (beneficial), or feeling negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and depression (detrimental)?  Are your actions helping you or hurting you?  These are excellent questions to ask ourselves!

Always take care of yourself first.  If you don't take care of your mind, body, and soul, you will, without a doubt, become stressed sooner than later.  Recently I have written about taking care of your mind and body, and you can read about it by clicking here.  In addition, I wrote about taking care of yourself in a more spiritual way, and you can read about it by clicking here

It is my great fortune to be able to help people, on a daily basis, relieve their stress, and one of the most important things in order to move forward is to become more aware of our thoughts, feelings, and actions so that we can become better and better at life, not more bitter and bitter.  Awareness is key!   

B...  Believe in yourself!  When we believe in ourselves, we increase our self-confidence, and when we have great self-confidence we obtain greater things in our lives because we dare to pursue them.  Every action, and every decision is based on whether we believe in ourselves, or that we can do something, or not.

No matter who I help, parents who have lost a child, a police officer, a medic, someone in the military, or a Mother who has great concern about her child, one of the greatest things I get to do is bring them back to believing in themselves.  When we practice the art of believing in ourselves, we truly destress.

C...  Create better habits that match your values.  We all have values, and when we do not live by them, we develop stress by inner conflict, which in turn develops into lack of trust in ourselves, also known as low self-confidence. 

One of the biggest examples of this inner conflict is valuing friends and family the most but habitually working long unhealthy hours at work, and thus we have absolutely no time with friends and family. 

Another big example of this is believing and valuing a healthy lifestyle will bring us more happiness and yet continuing to eat unhealthy processed foods, drinking ridiculous amounts of alcohol, and possibly smoking cigarettes. 

Additionally, we may value enjoying life but work and live in very unpleasant environments that are caused by our habits like anger, anxiety, being annoyed, being controlling, being stubborn, and/or not being understanding, which are all habitual ways of being.  Sometimes we don't think it is us, and if you don't, which it partly (if not totally) is, then change your environment.

You may be thinking that by me saying that your environment is unpleasant because of you that I am being harsh or ridiculous.  But, if you learn to destress yourself, you can make any environment enjoyable.  You now may be thinking that I am totally stretching it but, if you have seen what I have seen, and see, you would believe me.  And if you don't, then work on ways to change where you are.

Please believe me when I say that I do not mean to be unkind!  When I ask people to look at themselves they either get it or get offended.  It is not my intention for anyone to get offended, it is my total intention to destress yourself, and I mean that with all my heart and soul. ;0)

One thing that I know for sure is that you value yourself, and if you have habits that contradict that, you are causing yourself stress.  Just the simple habit of thinking that you are not good enough for anything is a contradiction to you valuing yourself.  Do you get it?

So, if you want to destress yourself, contemplate the ABC's of destressing and apply them this week.  I promise you, that you will move towards destressing yourself, if you are not there already.


Love you!  Have a great week!!!  Have fun and be playful!

Big Hugs...

 
Elizabeth