|
|
Stress, fear, anxiety, worry, inadequacy - modern pandemics?
Nearly everyone who comes to Middle Path is looking for a better way to handle stress - our recommendation is: eliminate stress with CyberSayer® - the personal awareness technology we've been developing here at Middle Path.
There is nothing quite like stress to crush your enjoyment of life. These days stress has many faces: anxiety, panic attacks, worry, feelings of inadequacy, doubts about your ability to cope with whatever life puts in your path (to name a few).
At the root of them all is a common stimulus - fear, the basic fear that we aren't able to “properly” deliver what is expected of us.
And its an illusion - if you think about it, do you know anyone who died from not being able to handle a situation “properly”
|
|
Stress can become a way of life for many
|
Stress - becoming a way of life for many? |
Sure, many have died from the consequences of sustained levels of stress - it does play havoc with our body, emotions and mind. Eventually our body's ability to withstand the pressures of living on the edge of disaster is overwhelmed and a disease condition arises which, in time, becomes life-threatening.
When you boil it all down, most of these conditions which we call stress result from a common state - fear. These days there are so many things we have to deal with and so little we can rely on that stress is a very understandable way to experience life.
sometimes fight or flight is OK
|
|
|
Most agree that stress is the primordial “fight-or-flight” response preparing us to flee from a life-threatening situation or to stand and combat the foe.
All well and good but these days stress is arising within our daily lives - in our jobs, our homes, our relationships - and these are not supposed to be life-threatening, some might even say they ought to be life-supporting.
|
|
sometimes it is not
|
|
In the days when we were hunter gatherers this fight or flight response was very necessary to individual, family and tribal survival.
When it was provoked it was nearly always followed by a period of intense physical exertion and activity which helped the body dissipate and eliminate chemical buildup in the bloodstream.
physical response to stress
|
|
|
These days many people experience the stress without the physical activity - such as at the office - and the body has no way of dealing with the chemical influx other than to store it somewhere and deal with it later on.
Problems arise when the sustained chemical buildup is greater than the periods of stress-free activity (usually called exercise) which help the body get rid of the toxic buildup caused by stress.
All these responses shown in the diagram involve the release of chemicals - hormones, cholesterol and many others - into the bloodstream. These chemicals are useful when we are fighting or fleeing for our lives but they are not helpful when we are sitting, standing and lying down.
They are especially troublesome when we are trying to sleep or relax.
|
Let us give you an example of how trying to manage stress can, itself, be stressful: these days many see making more money as the obvious way to reduce financial stress. For those who want to work smarter, not harder, and enjoy it, much advice centers on one thing - “follow your passion”.
We think thats good advice but for many the first steps are a) recognise you might have a passion b) accept it is ok for you to be passionate and c) discover what it is.
An example - “Follow your Passion” stress
Let's assume you want to improve your life and feel more motivated, involved, excited, enthusiastic about your life.
Let's also presume you've read that creating a better life is a natural consequence of living with passion, in other words “follow your passion”?
So you are wanting to “follow your passion” but you feel frustrated because you don't seem to be able to identify what you passion is let alone know what to do to follow it.
|
|
putting the cart before the
horse gets you nowhere
|
|
The more books you read the more the frustration grows, the more you get told to follow your dreams, set some goals, create a vision etc, the more inadequate, frustrated and unmotivated you become.
What is happening is that you are converting some financial stress into a lot of feeloing inadequate stress. The overall result is an increase in stress levles - the exact opposite of what you set out to do.
The reason this happens is that this is one of those “cart before the horse” situations - the cart being passion and the horse representing movement or motivation.
You can't get anywhere unless the cart and the horse are in the right order - and when you get moving in life all sorts of problems - even disease - drop by the wayside: stress, anxiety, depression, relationship woes, financial pressures because you are alive, energised and, you guessed it - living a life of passion.
Life's a journey and, unless you are moving, you're going nowhere!
One sure-fired way of putting your horse back in front of your cart and getting back on the road to a better life - whatever that might mean to you - is using CyberSayer.
You see, if you haven't yet discovered what your passion is, CyberSayer won't waste time encouraging you to follow something you haven't found yet. It might tell you things which will stimulate you to recognise your passion first-hand, within yourself. Or maybe it will talk about what you do to prevent yourself acknowledging that you have passion. It may even help you to recall times when someone crushed your passion. Or maybe one of many other avenues to help you to become aware of and accept - as a friend - your passion.
From there its not a problem following it!
And that is only one example - there are so many others but we hope it has given you a glimpse of how CyberSayer works.
What to do about stress - the “management” myth
The common approach to stress is to manage it. Manage it with an added workload of relaxation, meditation, mediation, substance abuse (legal and illegal, prescribed and unprescribed), professional help - essentially increase the demands on our time and tolerance.
This seems to assume that stress is a way of life and the only sensible thing to do is to learn to live with it in the hope of slowing down how fast it kills you.
Its a bit like trying to live longer crossing the highway by learning to dodge cars and trucks more efficiently.
Our approach is different and comes down to:-
Why try to manage something that is killing you when you can eliminate it entirely?
That's right, we believe you can eliminate negative stress from your life to a point where the only stress you have to deal with is positive stress - the kind that keeps you interested, involved, motivated and stimulated.
And you don't have to move you and the family to a remote desert island, you can accomplish this right where you are by adjusting your beliefs and attitudes.
You see we have found that it is what people believe and what they assume about situations which are at the root of much of today's stress-filled lifestyles.
And most of these are not things they have developed themselves - they are things that they have picked up from other people as they travelled through life and because they are not native to the person they are the foundation upon which stress builds through everyday situations.
When you examine what underlying beliefs or attitudes are supporting your experience of stress you create a situation where you can choose to have the stress or let it go simply by choosing to persist in a way of thinking that fosters the stress or let it go and adopt an attitude which vaccinates you against stress.
We are not saying that eliminating stress is an overnight “quick-fix” rather we view it as a longer-term strategy to develop the life-skills or life-attitudes which make you immune to stress and it's life-destroying side effects.
|
|
Our Free Stress Management Kit
|
|
There are many natural ways to manage stress while you are developing a new approach to life where negative stress has no place.
Our recommendation to eliminating negative stress is talk with CyberSayer® - the personal empowerment app we've developed.
You can read more about what that involves at cybersayer.com.
In the meantime, our ebook “Stress - an Overview” will give you a much more detailed look at the beast, together with some management techniques that will help you survive until you decide to really do something about it.
middlepath.com.au> Middle Path> Quality of Life> Stress an overview
|
|
