Posts Tagged With: stress
Stress (post by Les Brown)
Stress can shut down your power if you let it. Don’t allow people, bills, or pressures on the job to consume your focus, energy and joy for life. Uncontrolled stress can cause you to gain weight; change your personality, create problems in your relationships, turn your hair gray overnight, make you sick, and make it difficult for you to get out of bed.
Take time to become aware of the major stressors in your life and the ways you are dealing with them. Recognize the price you are paying for not taking deliberate action with regards to your spiritual, social, emotional and physical well-being. In the face of what may appear to be crippling circumstances, choose to live every part of your life. Decide to be happy, actively engaged and live from the inside out. Create centered and grounding moments in your own life as part of your spiritual life.
Use what works – exercise, meditation, meaningful connections with others. Volunteer your time to make a difference in the lives of others. You are more powerful than you are currently living. Harness your power to live above the stress in your life. You have GREATNESS within you!
The Empty Pickle Jar (from simple truths)
A movie about what really matters
Sometimes, life can be very stressful. Lots to do, but not enough time. This 3-minute movie will put it all in perspective. It’s all about our priorities and the choices we make. I’ll guarantee…it will make you smile, make you think, and make you want to share it with everyone you know. Enjoy!
The Empty Pickle Jar
Missing Stuff (post from Kirk Weisler)
The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds. -Thomas Merton
In preparing to sell our home in the Atlanta area Rebecca and I had set a goal to significantly reduce the amount of stuff we have. We want our next home to be less than half the size of our current one…. and we want to move with less 1/3rd of the stuff. Rebecca is already an anti-clutter black belt but I needed some serious time in the dojo. Still over the past 2 months I have been becoming a black belt user on Craigs List and doing a small amount of listing on E-bay as well. (ebay seems to be better for Comic Books, book collections, legos etc) These methods along with some trips to the trusty good will store have emptied out our home which now has several empty rooms. And I can envision loading that moving van in less than 2 hours when the time comes.
We thought we would be moved out by now but our contracted buyer just fell through. So with FOR SALE sign back in the yard we are faced with a reality that we may be here another few weeks or even months. But we have sold couches, dressers, tables, chairs, lawn care equipment, a bed (spare), toys, books, and more. I commented to Rebecca … that perhaps we had been premature on selling many of these things. Her response was this simple question.
“Have you missed anything that we have gotten rid of?” My answer came surprisingly quickly … “No.” not just No….but NO!!
She said, “Me either.”
I can’t help but think the same is true of anything that clutters our lives, including especially our thoughts. What if the following picture wasn’t material stuff…but emotional stuff. What might the labels be if it represented mental clutter? Not just what it is, but why it’s there and where and how would we get rid of it? There is no craigs-listing for crappy thinking? (at least I don’t think there is) Can a person e-bay their resentment over a real or imagined slight by a co-worker? I can see where Good Will donations would help…but what about the rest of it? Where do we drop off our mental clutter ? Can we just let it go?
I believe we can let it go. I am not saying it is easy to do this…but look at the alternative… is it any easier to keep it and carry it around? Is it easier to live with the clutter or to practice and become an expert at letting it go, and staying de-cluttered? To any extent we can be successful in clearing out the clutter we then create space for other more important things like peace, creativity, focus, or even relationships. Who wouldn’t trade an overwhelmed or cluttered mind for some peace of mind?
And when we get some of the clutter, worry, insecurity, stress, resentfulness or whatever might be cluttering our thoughts out… I’m almost certain we won’t miss it!
Kirk out
A Glass of Water
A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?”
Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”
It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!
(Thanx Asha Littlejohn for posting and now I am passing it on)
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