Don’t manage the damage that is related to stress. The only form of stress management that will make a difference in the way you feel is managing to be free of stress. According to a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, stress as a cause of death overshadows stroke, heart attack, cancer, and back problems.
According to Beck Barrow, www.dailymail.co.uk, “Experts said the psychological condition [stress] had become so widespread that it was the ‘21st century equivalent of the Black Death.’” Likewise, Ezine Articles (ezinearticles.com) expert Elisabeth Kuhn writes, “Maybe this sounds a little overdramatic but unfortunately the reality is that excessive, untreated stress can actually kill you.” Since we established that stress kills, what part of your stress would you really want to manage anyway?
Once we feel stressed out, the damage has been done. The body is already responding to the feeling of stress, and a whole host of negative physical and psychological symptoms have begun. Instead of spending years taking workshops and listening to lectures on how to manage your stress, why not
learn how to avoid feeling stressed altogether by managing your thoughts?
The million-dollar question is how do you learn to manage your thinking to avoid creating stressful feelings?
One way to manage your thinking is to use something similar to one of Cesar Millan’s (star of the television series Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, from 2004-2012) dog-training techniques. Millan emphasizes that “you must gain control of the situation and dog behavior before it escalates.” Similarly, you have to gain control of your thinking by catching your first negative thought in the act before it escalates into a stressed out situation. A single negative thought is just a single negative thought until it escalates to more negative thoughts which can very quickly become stress. To gain control you must notice the very first thought of worry, fear, anxiety, pressure, or an impending threat.
That is when the first hint of stress begins. To repeat, you have to notice the first hint of a single negative thought—then immediately distract yourself by thinking a single positive thought before that single negative thought escalates to a multitude of negative thoughts that intensify to an unmanageable level of stress. Since feeling stressed out begins with a single negative thought, the sooner you recognize your first negative thought, the easier it will be to change it to a positive thought and avoid feeling stressed.
More great tips are waiting below in the free first chapter of Good With Me!
