Читать книгу: «From Stress to Success: 10 Steps to a Relaxed and Happy Life: a unique mind and body plan»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface

Introduction

Running a Phrase

Part I: The Emotional Aspects of Stress

1 Creative Thought

2 More Thoughts

3 Past Programming

4 Regression, Finding Your Past

5 Addictions and Preferences

6 Be Willing to Change

7 Get Clear on Your Outcome

8 Powerful Thought

9 Affirmations

10 Face the Worst and Know You Can Cope

11 Believe in a Positive Future

12 Proaction versus Reaction

13 Your Life Plan

14 You Are Terrific

15 Playing God and Being perfect

16 Summary

17 Conclusions to Part I

Part II: The Physical Aspects of Stress

18 Your Mind and Your Body

19 Stress and Overload

20 The Mental-Physical Connection

21 What Your Body Needs

22 Your 10-step Health Check and Stress-reducing Regime

Resources

List of Searchable Terms

Author Biography

About the Publisher

Preface

This is a book about choices. Stress is not necessary; it can be eliminated. It is yours if you choose to experience it; equally, by the choices you make, you can avoid and eliminate stress from your experience.

You are only stressed if you think you are. You are only helpless if you think you are. You are only trapped in a situation from which you cannot escape if you think you are. By altering the way you think, your attitudes and your expectations you can choose to have a stress-free existence. In this book you will learn how to accomplish this. The changes you make in your life as a result will enable you to change the way you think and feel and will also bring about unexpected changes in the people and events around you.

There is no such entity as a stress, out there, waiting to get you. What stresses you depends on your response and says more about you than about the external factors that trigger your stress response. Learn about yourself. By developing a better understanding of yourself and your reactions, by being willing to take control of your life and your thoughts, by coming to terms with yourself and by giving yourself the respect, trust and love that you give to other people you can turn a stressful and worrying existence into days of peace and pleasure.

The aim of this book is to empower you to re-create your life. The future is yours: it can be similar to the present with its anxieties, fears and stresses, or it can be positive and peaceful.

Stress or peace, the choice is yours. This book will give you the tools and help you to make the choice and create the peace.

The following concepts and strategies are covered in Part I:

1 Stress is your own experience. It is personal to you and generated by you. It is not directly to do with things outside yourself; they are only the triggers to a response from within you, a response that is individual to you.

2 Feeling stressed is your choice and you can choose to continue or to stop. There is no such thing as a universal stress.

3 You can use the awareness of what stresses you to learn more about yourself and then use this knowledge for change (of yourself).

4 Be willing to change what you are doing – if what you have been doing has not been working, be willing to do something different.

5 You are responsible for, and have had some input into, all that happens, and has happened, in your life. Be willing to assume that you are in total control. Be willing to give up victim status.

6 Get clear on your outcome – what are you really trying to achieve? Are you trying to prove someone else wrong, to force someone else to be different, to have something to complain about, to get sympathy or attention? Do you really want to reduce your stress?

7 Know you can cope. Avoid the stress caused by fear of the unknown. Imagine the worst possible scenario. Find out how you would deal with it. Then get on with handling the present.

8 Believe in a positive future, that whatever happens is, and will be, for the best, but do this without ceasing to care and without developing a laissez-faire attitude.

9 Much stress is caused by your fear of other people’s opinions of you and your deeds. Decide who you are and who you want to be. Get a clear statement of purpose, develop your own Life Plan. Keep this plan clearly in your mind, live by it and many of your stresses will dissipate.

10 You are terrific. Most stress comes from your feelings of inadequacy. Develop full confidence in yourself, be willing to like, love and approve of yourself. If you don’t, who will?

Introduction

Since this is a book about stress it is important, from the start, to establish what we mean by stress. Many people discuss stress as if it is some sort of external agent or event that has attacked them. In fact, stress is not something external that you can define, identify and measure. Stress is the disturbance created within you by your response to a situation or activity, be it internal or external.

Stresses can be pleasant, such as the excitement caused by an anticipated pleasurable event. They can also be unpleasant and cause you distress. It is these unpleasant stressful responses to situations that we will be discussing and dealing with here.

This book will show you how to handle these unpleasant stresses in your life by a new and positive method, one that helps you to get to the real heart of the problem and solve it. In this way you can rid yourself of all your responses to situations and people that currently cause you to feel worried, anxious, fearful, angry, resentful, guilty, dominated, out of control and many other unpleasant emotions.

You will learn how to eliminate the stress from your life, once and for all. You will learn how to discover the real causes of the way you feel and how to change so that your life is stress-free and positive. You will still have challenges but they will be of your own choosing and will not distress you. Stress in itself is not bad; it is part of the challenge and excitement of life. It is the stresses that cause distress that we are aiming to eliminate.

To eliminate this stress you will not be taught first aid techniques for handling it. Techniques such as deep breathing, relaxation, meditation, learning to count to ten and so forth may indeed help you to handle the stresses you have now, provided you practise them consistently, but they will not eliminate your stresses. They may even work against you. I recently spoke with someone who said they did their relaxation techniques so well before an exam that when it was time for them to write the paper they were too relaxed to put a lot of energy into it and as a result they failed.

The ideas described here are not designed to help you cope with stress. They are designed to reduce and even eliminate the times you feel stressed, the times you feel an unpleasant response to a situation.

Identifying the problem

Most people have problems and most people put these problems down to stress. The trouble with this is that it is not specific. The statement ‘I am stressed’ does not identify the problem and so it does not lead to the finding of a solution to the situation.

Over the years countless patients have come into my practice saying that they are suffering from stress, with no details as to precisely what they mean by that, as if the term alone explained everything. It sometimes even seems that they think of it as some sort of bug they have caught, for which they are not responsible. As they might expect, inappropriately, an antibiotic from a doctor for a cold, they seem to expect a few vitamin pills or herbs from a naturopath to give them the calm they desire.

The really troublesome aspect of their approach is that their argument seems to go like this:

My life is not working at the moment, there are problems. I have too much to do, too little money, too many responsibilities, too little time. I’m not loved enough by people I love, my friends let me down, the boss is impossible, the children are a worry, the news is always bad, times are tough. If only the recession would lift, the children would behave, the boss would retire, my marriage could be the way it was in the beginning, people would expect less of me, then I would be happy.

In other words, if those outside situations changed then they would be happy. There is rarely a recognition that they could change and thus improve the situation.

There are always many seemingly rational explanations for the fact that your life is not exactly the way you want it to be. It is all too easy to assume that the solution lies outside yourself, in the world at large. The problem is that you cannot force all these external factors to change in the way you would like them to. The next assumption is that since you cannot change these external factors, you are helpless to improve your situation.

The comforting thing about this assumption and this attitude is that the problems are not your responsibility, they are not of your own making and you cannot be blamed for them. The trouble with this view is that since, for things to get better in your life, things outside your direct control have to change, you are helpless and the best you can do is to try to make the best of things and learn tolerance and acceptance.

This attitude means that the solution to your present stress must come from improving your ability to handle your present, apparently unchangeable, stresses. Thus you do relaxation exercises, deep-breathing exercises and go to classes on other stress-handling techniques, all aimed at increasing your ability to cope. Sadly, these are largely quick fixes and rarely work on a long-term and permanent basis to make your life happier and more stress-free.

The alternative method is to believe that you are indeed, in some way, responsible for the way you feel. You may not be able to control the recession, but you can control your own finances and the way you think about them. You may not be able to force the children to behave differently, but you can change the way you treat them and the way in which you respond to their behaviour. You can assume that a way does exist to create a more comfortable relationship with your boss and you can then work on discovering it.

While this approach takes away the comfort of blaming outside factors for your situation and stops you being a victim who deserves sympathy, it does give you a powerful tool in return. It encourages you to make the positive changes that will indeed lower the amount of stress you experience. So let’s explore this approach further.

The concept of stress

Stress is not a new or rare concept. Almost everyone, at some time or another, thinks they are stressed. The overworked, overworried, unhappy person knows they are stressed all the time. Worse still, they will claim their problem is (non-specific) stress rather than concern over a specific issue. Even the happiest of people will almost certainly claim to feel stressed occasionally. There are few people who have not, at one time or another, said they were stressed. Most people feel stressed, and say so, at some point. People you know do. You do, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this book.

It may surprise you to know that stress, as an entity, is a new concept, a concept of the past 40 or so years. Our grandparents did not grow up with stress as a familiar word. They might have said they were worried, afraid, tired or had too much to do, but they probably didn’t lump it all together and call it stress. Today, however, everyone is familiar with the concept of stress. You probably think of stress as anything difficult, troublesome, painful, challenging or harmful in your life. You may blame stress for the way you feel and the way you behave. You probably blame stress for everything that goes wrong in your life, much that goes wrong with your body and most of the things with which you cannot cope. You may then blame these problems, in turn, for making you feel even more stressed. You may even think that if you had a totally stressfree existence your life would be perfect.

If you read the papers, magazines and books and listen to the media, you will have realized that you are constantly being exposed to the idea that you should reduce the stress in your life, you should learn to cope with stress, you should overcome stress and not let it get you down. You may indeed have tried the old and hackneyed so-called remedies for stress, but the stress and your feelings of tension and diminished health have continued. You may even be feeling more stressed by your inability to profit from the books on relaxation and meditation and your inability to conquer your stress.

All too often the problem of stress can become overwhelming. When you are under great strain it is easy to lose the ability to view yourself and the situation from a realistic perspective. You may then make a number of rash decisions, based on erroneous premises and create more stress for yourself, thus generating a vicious circle.

The pace of life is faster in the 21st century than it has ever been before. In the past we spoke to our friends face to face or wrote letters; later we used the phone; now we are supposed to be able to master computers, mobile communications, the internet, IT, WAP and a multitude of technologies. In the past we walked from place to place; now we are supposed to be able to handle with equanimity crowded trains on unreliable timetables, road chaos and traffic jams or near misses in the sky. In the past we lived close to the earth with space to move and breathe freely, space to be alone or with friends; now we live in crowded towns and cities, rarely exposed to the peace of the open countryside. When some of us grew up we had a full expectation of getting a job and finding full employment for our whole working life; that is no longer the case. We used to live in a relatively unpolluted world; now we consume or are exposed to thousands of toxins, many of which affect our emotional state and mental clarity. No wonder so many people feel that stress is on the increase.

Where other books on stress tell people how to relax, how to meditate, how to do deep breathing exercises, in this book you will be taken back to the ultimate source of your stress and given assistance in identifying the specific problem. ‘Stress’, as a word on its own, is, as we have seen, too vague and non-specific. It is an amorphous monster waiting to attack and forever evading defeat. If you say you are stressed, there may seem to be little you can do about it. On the other hand, if you say you are frightened, you can identify the object of your fear and deal with it. If you say you are angry, you can identify the cause of your anger and do something about it. If you say you feel guilty, you can identify the cause of your guilt and do what is appropriate to assuage it. In phrasing the problem you also identify the area of your life with which you have to deal. By putting the problem into a large miscellaneous basket labelled ‘stress’, it loses its identity and becomes some overwhelming ogre that you cannot fight.

There are, however, several levels in this self-exploration. At the first level you may say you feel stressed. At the second level you may identify the major problem in your life as worries about money. In turn this may worry you because it may mean you cannot provide for those you love. At an even deeper level you may fear that if you cannot provide for them they will leave you, or they will think badly of you. Thus you will, in time, get down to the ultimate problem, your own insecurity about yourself.

You can deal with specific emotions more easily than with unidentified ‘stress’. Finding the root cause of the problem will enable you to solve the problem rather than just deal with it. Here we will be working together to find the specific cause of your feelings of stress and then to resolve the issues involved.

Once you have done this you no longer have to deal with stress, you no longer need to feel stressed, and it is easy. The solution, once you have grasped it, is not something that you have to work at remembering to do. You do not have to be disciplined and force yourself to deal with the problems in the new way. The new way, once you fully grasp it, becomes the obvious, easy and most satisfactory way of dealing with the challenges in your life. It is like walking through a peaceful and newly discovered mountain pass rather than having to struggle to climb the rugged and dangerous mountain. Just as you do not have to discipline yourself not to struggle over the rugged mountain to get to the next valley, once you have discovered the easy pass, so it is with this new way of dealing with the situations that arise in your life. It is much easier than the old approach.

This book is divided into two parts involving respectively your emotions and your physical health. Before you start on your journey it is important for you to consider whether or not there is a physical basis for any of the stress you are feeling. A number of physical health problems can lead to you feeling stressed, uptight, easily irritated, depressed or anxious.

The first, and major, part of the book covers your own internal emotional and intellectual responses to situations and the ways in which these can be changed. The second part covers the physical health problems that can generate feelings of stress. If you think there is a physical health problem to be solved then take a quick look at Part II. After all, there is little point in working through Part I and searching for problems in your apparently happy childhood when the real cause of your present situation is the tension caused by consuming a food to which you are allergic, the jitters caused by hypoglycaemia or the emotional disturbances resulting from an excess of Candida albicans in your system.

You may indeed have unresolved issues resulting from your parents’ divorce or your feelings of being second best as a child, but focusing on these will be of only partial help if you neglect your nutrition and suffer physical ill-health as a result. Most people will find that both parts of the book are important and helpful.

Do not be misled by the fact that the second part is the shorter of the two. It is meant as a guideline, to point you in the direction in which you need to go for better physical health. The first part is the longer of the two, as here we explore the emotional aspects of stress in greater detail than the physical ones. It offers some new concepts on ways to deal with stress, concepts that have been used extensively with patients and workshop participants and produced exciting results, concepts that, therefore, warrant a more extensive explanation and discussion.

It is now time to outline the various components of the book in greater detail.

Part I: The emotional aspects of stress

Your first challenge starts right here. The following 10 points are fundamental to the method of dealing with stress presented in this book. Read these 10 points before you read the rest of the book and as you do so, become aware of your own reactions to them and, more importantly, write these down.

You will almost certainly feel like arguing with some, if not most, of the points listed. You may want to claim that things are not your fault, that you cannot change things but are stuck in a highly stressful situation. You may argue that there is nothing to be done about the stresses in your life or that if there is then someone else should be doing it. You may insist that things are so bad there is no way out and the future can only be worse. Write these thoughts down.

You may protest that the ideas expressed are familiar to you, that you have read or heard them before, that you have done the things that are suggested and yet you still feel stressed. Write these comments down.

Keep these notes handy. Read the book and do the (mental) exercises suggested. Make the changes that seem appropriate to you. Then, when you have completed the book, read this section again with your original notes beside you and discover how much you have changed.

Once you have done this you will realize fully how much less stressed you are, how much better you are at handling your life and how much more in control and happy you are.

Having said all that, it is worth pointing out that, like the instruction to write down your goals, 95 per cent of you won’t do it, 5 per cent of you will. If you do you will get far more out of this book than if you don’t. I am assuming that you are one of the five per cent who will.

There is one further task for you to do before you start. Make a list now of all the things that stress you in your life and the reasons why you find these things stressful. Include all the big stresses in your life but also all the small stresses, the little things that cause you problems. Some of them may seem too small to mention but write them all down now. You will then be able to use this list as you go through the book. Any time you have an insight into one of your stresses you will be able to check it off as something you can now deal with in a different and more peaceful and productive way.

Stop reading now. Follow the above suggestions. Write this list down before you read on. This is essentially a practical book, not a book to be read through fast and taken in passively. The method works, if you do. Make your list and then read on.

You are in for an exciting journey in personal growth and development. If you follow through with the things you will read about you will also find that life is a lot less stressful for you in the future.

Dealing with external stressors

• If you can change the external stressors in your life then do so. If you feel cold, put on more clothes. If you hate your house and can move, do so. If a divorce is really essential then get on with it.

• If you cannot change the external stressors, then working with the following points will help you to reduce your feelings of stress. Even if you can change the external factors, working with the following points will help you to create a stress-free future faster than you could otherwise do.

Here we go.

1 Stress is your own experience; it is personal to you and generated by you. It is not directly to do with things outside yourself; they are only the triggers to a response from within you, a response that is individual to you. There is no such thing as a universal stress.

This covers a controversial and, at the same time, exciting approach to stress. The controversial hypothesis presented here is that there is no such thing as stress. There is only your own, individual, response to situations. This may set you thinking and even protesting. Yet we will persist with the idea. According to this hypothesis there is no such thing as a universal stress ‘out there’ that comes to ‘get you’. There is only you as an individual and your response to a situation.

Most people find speaking in public to be a highly traumatic experience. A few people love doing it and thrive on it. Many people find a cocktail party or a similar social gathering to be a high point in their social calendar. Some people find this a highly stressful experience. They are frightened of what people will think, unsure of what they will say or do and delighted when the evening is over. Most people love a chance to lie on a sunny beach and soak up the sun as they let the tensions ooze out of their life. A few people find this a highly stressful situation, feeling frustrated at the lack of things to do and accomplish. Most people hate wars and fighting. A few people look for wars and are only happy when in highly dangerous situations. Some people find routine jobs boring and stressful, other people love them for their predictability and their routine. Some people feel stressed by challenge. Others respond to and thrive on it.

There is no single thing that is a universal stress. There is only your response to the outside world and the situations it provides. These you will either enjoy and respond to positively or will dread and fear. When you fully understand this you have made the first step in recognizing and then reducing the stress in your life. The next step is up to you.

2 Feeling stressed is your choice and you can choose to continue or to stop. It is up to you to make the changes.

Since stress is an individual thing experienced by you in response to both external factors and your own inner interpretation of them, you can be in control. If you are willing to change your response you can reduce or eliminate your feelings of stress.

Will you continue on your present path or are you willing to learn more about yourself? Are you willing to change yourself so that you do not respond to the outside events with all the reactions that you now group together under the heading of stress?

Your immediate answer may well be, yes, of course I am willing to change, I do not want to go on feeling stressed. However, a surprising number of people are not willing to be the ones to change. They think other people should change first. Others insist they are willing to change yet they do not do so. Others change a little and then stop. Perhaps they think that other people should now change too. Perhaps they think that there has not been sufficient benefit from the changes they have made. Just a few people are willing to change, and keep on changing and developing, until their life is just the way they want it and their stress is negligible.

3 You can use the awareness of what stresses you to learn more about yourself and then use this knowledge for change.

Finding out what causes you to feel stressed tells you more about yourself than about the stress. Some people like responsibility, some don’t. Your response says more about you than about the responsibility. Some people like solitude, other people don’t. Your response says more about you than about solitude.

The next step is for you to find out why a perceived stress in your life is indeed stressful for you, and why it makes you feel uncomfortable. The causes behind your response almost certainly lie somewhere in your past. After all, they can hardly come from the future, and the present is but a fleeting moment. You may have to search back to infancy and childhood. You may only have to go back to times in your earlier adult life.

One woman, Rosemary H., felt stressed every time her queue in the supermarket was not the fastest. By using various techniques that are described later in this book, she came to realize that this reaction stemmed from a feeling that if she was served last she was not getting the attention she deserved, and this in turn meant that she was not good or important enough. This came from a childhood where she was the youngest of four and her older siblings were always calling her stupid simply because she, being three years younger than the youngest of them, could not keep up.