Who isn’t stressed today. A world economic crisis to rival the Great Depression, bushfire and earthquake tragedies, pirates off the coast of Somalia and now swine flu. Never mind work, family or relationship pressures.
How do you relax in such a world? It’s easier than you may believe. This is the first in a series of articles on stress management explaining the simple and practical ways in which you can reduce stress in your life to a level that you can then do something positive about it.
Turn off your sources of stress
Interestingly of all the stressors listed in the first paragraph, only the world economic crisis has had any real adverse effect on me and that has been indirect. Yet if I’m not careful I can let all the others bring me down as well. I even made the conscious decision not to link to them from this article. Beware of dragons!
One of the quickest and easiest means of lowering my stress level has been to turn off the sources of stress which I have direct and immediate control of. The TV, radio and newspaper. This is burying my head in the sand in a positive manner because it gives me space to deal with the real problems. If I don’t hear about it, it doesn’t exist. With no plans to take a cruise along the coast of Africa I really don’t need to know about Somalian pirates. I can safely assume my travel agent will warn me when the time comes.
But you say, this makes you inconsiderate of the plight of others. Unless I can relax in my own life, I am unable to assist them anyway.
I rarely watch the news any more or read the headlines of the paper unless I pick up an inkling of something that will effect me directly. Even then I scan in preference to letting myself get drawn in. Last night was a good example of this. A new TV show called Second Chance made its debut last night. The show helps out families who are in difficulty by giving them a second chance. The experts educate us on what the focus family should have done and we, by inference, can apply that to our own lives. Instead it made me feel depressed so I changed channels. If I am depressed and in a mood of resignation about what is possible for me—and in such a mood little, if anything, is possible—then the best course of action I have is to remove myself from the environment that is bringing me down.
When you get home tonight and the news comes on try turning it off and putting on some music which lifts you. See what happens.