How can I reduce stress? And what is real stress? I hear so much about stress reducing health, but really don’t understand it –@Parito
I feel really bad for you. I hate stress. Stress has killed me. Made me sick. Made me angry. Made me want to kill myself at times. Made me want to kill others at other times.
Stress is often caused by a specific problem that can’t be immediately solved. If it could be immediately solved then you would feel happy and not stressed. What are those problems?
Financial? Maybe you’ve lost your job and you look at your bank account and say, “I have six months left to live.” I have felt that stress often. Love? I like a girl but she may or may not like me or maybe she likes someone else. I have felt that stress as well. Both these stresses have come close to ending me up in jail or the hospital. It’s not fun to experience stress.
Other than the direct consequences of stress (you might hurt someone. You might hurt yourself), there’s the indirect consequences: lack of sleep, drinking too much, using some other form of escapism or addiction to battle the drudgery of non-stop stress. Stress withers away at your skin until there’s only bone left. Withers away at your brain until there’s only insanity left.
So give up. You can’t solve your problem. Today.
But if you reduce the symptoms caused by your stress you’ll often find, magically, that the underlying problem is gone as well.
Physically: Exercise, eat well, sleep well, take walks, try to explore with your eyes details you’ve missed before in your surroundings.
Emotionally: be nice to people. Even the ones causing you stress. Be grateful for them. Forgive them. Only surround yourself with people who love you.
Mentally: challenge yourself every day. Come up with lists of ideas. Come up with lists of ideas for other people. Introduce two people to each other that you think will need each other.
Spiritually: Invite magic back into your life. You are feeling stress because you can’t control the world. One time I was seeing a therapist and he asked me, “what can I do to relieve your stress?” and I replied “write me a check for one million dollars”. And of course he could not do that. I couldn’t control anyone to write that check.
So I gave up. I surrendered. Dear god, it’s too much for me. YOU Take it! And give it. It doesn’t matter if you believe in god. There’s enough mystery in the world and inside of your brain that when you add it all together it equals… something. We don’t know what it equals. But it’s enough to bow down and surrender to.
I can’t take it anymore. You take it.
And mean it.
Then your stress will go away and, quite magically, you’ll find your problems that caused the stress will go away as well.