Eliminating Stress

Stress can be debilitating and contributes to ill health. In fact, recent research indicates up to 95% of illness comes from stress.

Stress costs businesses millions of dollars every year. This may be stress at work, financially, at home, with relationships or it could be related to health. Through feeling stressed, a person's performance drops and thus the productivity drops.

Stress is your reaction to a stimuli. So there is good stress and bad stress. Good stress includes exercise and doing good things whereas bad stress includes financial problems, pressure to perform, having to get things done by a certain time, doing something you do not want to do, someone giving you a hard time and worrying about something.

Stress can be created by:

• a business owner/manager - in the way he/she thinks and works with their team
• problems at home
• problems at work
• personal problems
• de-motivated staff or motivated by the wrong factors
• too much work
• not enough time/people to do the work
• too much pressure to perform and/or achieve targets
• problems dealing with bad customers
• poor eating habits or not getting enough sleep

Some symptoms of stress are:

• feeling uptight
• sore back/neck/back
• worrying
• short-tempered
• headaches
• high blood pressure
• depression/anxiety/panic feelings
• sleep problems
• tiredness/inability to think clearly
• don't feel like eating/eat to feel good

 
There are many ways of trying to fix stress. Three major ones are:

(i) Coping

This is like floundering. Sometimes you feel like you are above water, other times under it.

To help fix it, you may resort to a "crutch". These include:

• Drugs (prescribed and recreational)
• Alcohol
• Cigarettes
• Food
• Caffeine
• Exercise
• Retail Therapy (great if it's with the credit card of the person causing the stress!)
• Work - you throw yourself more into your work
• Gambling
• Self Mutilation

You plug these in to make you feel better in some way. They help you "cope".

Problem is, while you fail to deal with the stress, you can feel worse. The coping mechanisms can then have less effect so you now need more of them or you need them in a higher concentration. When they fail to work, you can go for something more powerful or you can for a combination of products.

One lady was taking 15 tablets of medication a day. Three were for the primary complaint and the others were for the side effects created by the primary three.

(ii) Managing

This includes massage, meditation, yoga, relaxation, exercise, chiropractic, affirmations and meridian tapping.

These are great and will help you to feel good. They help to relieve the stress. Problem is, once you go home or back to work, you enter the stressful situation so you once again feel stressed.

Back to the therapist to let it out.

You have not learnt how to cease taking the stress on board.

(iii) Avoidance

Some people attempt to separate themselves from the stress. For example, a lady could not put up with her boss's bad moods so decided the best way to deal with this stress was to leave and get another job. The problem was, her new boss was great for four months before family problems caused him to emotionally have highs and lows (with the latter predominating). She then felt stressed as she had trouble handling his mood swings.

While it is okay to change jobs, it is better to deal with why she was initially reacting to her boss's moods.

A gentleman had just broken up with his girlfriend. To get over the stress he moved 820 miles away. Two years later he was back, saying "I found a new girlfriend. When that broke up I felt devastated like I did previously".

It doesn't matter where you go in the world, you carry your mindset with you.

While separating from the problem can work short-term, it very seldom works long term.

(iv) Deal With it

This is where you identify the cause of the problem and deal with it so you no longer react to it.

In the above example of where a guy felt devastated when his girlfriend left him, the cause was rejection. Once he learnt how to deal with rejection, felt good about who he was, saw himself as a great catch and visualised his ideal lady and how the relationship would ideally go, he no longer feared rejection.

If his next relationship broke up, he would feel in control and emotionally move on.

Sometimes the cause of a problem is not what one would initially think. For example, a person feeling depressed can be caused by low self esteem. Sleepwalking can be caused by their mind saying "sleep is dead time and there are things that need to be done".

Through dealing with the cause, the stress ceases to affect you in a negative way.

Holding any negative emotion for a long period of time will have a negative effect on your body and your health. Stress left undealt with leads to dis-stress, which them leads to dis-ease which leads to disease. Stress also depletes your immune system and reduces the rate at which your tissues repair and regenerate themselves.

The ultimate state is one of of peace, happiness and love.

Action Plan

If you are unable to deal with your stress, seek help.

The earlier you seek it, generally, the easier it is to fix.

When people become stressed, they focus on the problem. This only makes it worse.

Shift your focus to the solution. Become committed to learning how to take control and deal with problems and stresses.

Two books that can help include "You Have The Power" and "Empower Yourself".

For more help, please feel free to contact us.

Phone: 02 6921 6373  Email: info@clivemurphy.com  Address: P.O. Box 2421, Wagga Wagga NSW 2650 Australia