Certain attitudes add to or subtract from your stress. Here is a key one: resignation vs. acceptance.
Resignation is passive, leading to trapped feelings. “This is the way it is; I cannot change it. I am trapped, life is hopeless.”
Acceptance is active, leading to positive actions. “This is the way it is, but I can change myself and/or my circumstances. I am not trapped, I can move forward with hope.”
Resignation brings stress. Acceptance brings hope.
A real eye-opener when I first started studying stress management was the importance of paying attention to your physical body. I had to learn to recognize various physical symptoms of stress – everything from hyperventilating to trouble swallowing to neck pain to a racing heart to dizziness.
Your body often tells you that there’s a problem with stress before your mind actually picks up on it. So I might be going along in my day, working to meet three deadlines, and not be mentally aware of how much pressure I am experiencing and how my stress level is steadily climbing. But my body will tell me – through the pain in my neck, tension in my gut, and my quickened breathing.
If I pay attention to these physical symptoms, I can take steps to calm myself down before my stress level spins out of control. Say, take a time-out for some deep breathing exercises, or take a five-minute garden break, or go make a cup of fragrant, herbal tea.
If I can slow down physically, then go back to my work, I am more likely to remain calm and in control (and, incidentally, meet those deadlines!). If I ignore the physical symptoms and just plow on ahead, then my stress will continue to skyrocket until panic hits, sending any hope of meeting those deadlines out the window.
It pays to pay attention.
Anxiety often breeds an unremitting sense of hurry, at least for me. I have had to reclaim important territory in my journey into wholeness and healing, and that territory is the wonderful place called “Nothing.
Doing nothing can be hard. It’s not watching TV or reading a book or going shopping. Doing nothing is exactly that: doing nothing. Just relaxing, being content just to be, watching life unfold … at least until my eyelids begin to lazily close, surfeited by the lovely sense of nothing
The tasks can wait – they’ll still be there when I get back.
People and phone calls can wait – they’ll still be there when I get back.
Even my favorite books can wait – they’ll still be there when I get back.
Because sometimes, it’s important to spend time doing a whole lot of nothing.
As I look out on my garden beds today, they are nothing but bare ground. I’d show you a picture, but it would be rather depressing.
Or rather, it would be, except for one thing: I know what is coming. As you can see from this picture of my garden last year, a whole lot of color and life and vibrancy is coming!
As I was looking out at the bare earth today, I thought, “Hope, expectancy, and trust are all part of thriving. These are what get us through the barren times. The faith that the things we planted will grow, will bloom, will bear fruit. The knowledge that seasons in life change … and that there is always something new and beautiful right around the corner.”
It’s the first day of spring today … rejoice and be glad in it!
When I was little, my older sister told me that the seeds from milkweed pods were wishes. “Catch one and wish on it!” she would say. “Then blow it to release it. If the wish goes up, it will come true. If it falls to the ground, it won’t.”
How thrilling to see the milkweed fluff catch the wind with a shimmering glimmer and dance away into the sky! But how very disappointing when deeply-felt wishes sank to the ground, tangling on other plants or drowning in a nearby puddle.
Every fall, I still seek out ripe milkweed pods, blowing wishes by the dozens into the air. But I am content now to let them fly or fall as they will. My fulfillment and contentment do not depend on a bit of silk tossed here and there on the air. These things depend upon me – upon what I choose to do with my life, and with what I choose to do with the tough things life throws my way.
Knowing that, I am free to stand in a field with the joy of a child, blowing milkweed wishes up to the sun.