How to Reduce Stress
May 9, 2009 by coaching
Filed under Productivity
What Causes Stress?
James Bryden
We’ve all heard of common solutions to relieving stress. Things like meditation, breathing, diet, exercise and positive thinking all come readily to mind.
Bridging the gap between our western attitude to life focussed on material wealth and an eastern or traditional approach to life centred on our beingness for me is a real key.
Our society today promotes the myth that striving to be more, producing more and having more will ultimately solve our problems and make us happy.
Anything less we are led to believe makes us a failure. Add to that the information overload we all suffer from, it’s no wonder many people suffer from stress, depression, frustration and addictions.
A quick look at health statistics, mental and physical will readily confirm these assertions.
What is Success?
So how do you measure this thing called success? I think before we can measure it we need to define it. It means different things to different people. One of my favourite definitions is:
Progressive Realisation of Worthwhile Pre-Determined Personal Goals.
Coming from this perspective, the enjoyment is in what you do on the way to the achieving of the goal. In a way, the actual goal becomes secondary to the unspoken real goal which is self actualisation.
How do you know when you’ve made it? We are conditioned, it appears, to always view ourselves as somehow inadequate, not quite making the grade, and so we continue to strive to improve ourselves, to work even harder in order to get better results, accumulate wealth, material possessions or even enlightenment.
It’s struggle that we are sure to lose. But every day we repeat the same pattern, unconsciously striving for whatever it is we think will make us complete.
The reality is, you’ll never make it, you ARE it. You just aren’t aware of it yet.
Be Happy Anyway
It’s a big trap most fall into and in this respect we are like Sisyphus who, in ancient Greek mythology, was doomed forever in Hades to push a rock up a hill. He would nearly make it to the top when the effort would overtake him so he and the rock would roll all the way down to the bottom. He’d then have to start the whole futile exercise over again, with inevitably the same result.
It is all too easy to get caught up in and overwhelmed by the demands we put on ourselves that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that “Things” don’t make us happy.
Now, please understand there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting goals for anything. We , as human beings thrive on it. It’s the dysfunctional subconscious patterns, habits and beliefs that distort the whole process.
Why not be fundamentally happy anyway, BEFORE and DURING your quest, rather than putting unrealistic and impossible to meet conditions on yourself and those around you? Your sense of self worth stays with you regardless of what happens.
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Committed to YOUR Personal Productivity,
James is a productivity coach specializing in working with people who are procrastinators and those who want results quickly. His ability to get brilliant results with his clients is quite amazing…
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Hello James
My view on success is that a successful person is successful if they do what they love to do (as long as it is ethical) from the time they wake to the time they go to sleep. Our society loves to paint a picture of success that is based on the acquisition of material goods including qualifications. However true happiness and success is really to be able to spend your every waking hour following you passions and having full control on your life.
What do you think?