The world is made up of two categories of people: those who know how to be stress free and those who don’t. Stressful people are those who desire to control life. They like to mould life in the way they wish it to be. They are focused only on themselves. Those who are stress free are those who are able to flow with life.
What is Stress?
As long as we believe we are only the mind and body, we treat ourselves merely as a bio-machine. When we decide to take on a larger purpose for human life such as the decision to to transcend the mind and raise ourselves to a higher state of consciousness we shift our worldview to include the spiritual realm. In that state we can truly experience the divinity that we have forgotten. Until we reconnect with that state of bliss, we are in turmoil. This turmoil is what we experience as stress or tension. It stems from the confusion between our true nature and what we misunderstand ourselves to be and then we strive to become to fill the gap.
Incomplete Solutions
The “reasons” for stress in one person do not necessarily cause stress in another. Nowadays, it’s a big business to talk about stress and offer temporary solutions. Rather than fixing what is wrong within, where the real cause of stress resides, people try to wrestle with or dissolve stress by manipulating outer circumstances. These can never give any complete or permanent solutions because stress has nothing to do with outer circumstances.
The root of Stress
Stress becomes an inevitable part of life because we feel it is connected to the fast world outside of us. We feel there can be no life without what we term ‘stress’. The truth is, stress is just our own mind-body’s inner response to what happens outside of us. It is not the disturbance outside that creates trouble, tension and stress. It is the disturbance inside that does it.
For example, let us consider a situation where a set of people are visiting a beach. For one who has never been to a beach in their life, it will be a thrilling and joyous occasion. For one who lives in a beach town, going to a beach will not be a big deal. For one who works at the beach, say as a lifeguard, they would rather avoid going to the beach. For one who has witnessed a murder on a beach, a visit to the beach will be most stressful.
It is not the outer circumstances, but our perception and cognition of outer circumstances that creates stress inside us. The external environment is the same but it creates different impact on people depending on what they carry in their inner space. Hence, the solution for being free of stress will also be found by looking in.
This implies that the environment we see outside does not determine stress; what happens in the inner space creates stress. The good news is the root of stress is within us. The great news is then we have the power to avoid stress.
Guaranteed Solution to be Stress Free
Stress can be avoided by changing our perceptions of the world. We can make ourselves stress-proof by It is very simple to do. Nothing is inherently good or bad. Our beliefs, expectations, and judgements create the tension in our lives.
Being under constant stress makes one tire quickly and maybe fall sick. Over time, this leads to other conditions such as hypertension. There is no point in allowing a known destructor to keep operating in your system.
Change Your Worldview
Cut out stress at the root level by doing this simple exercise.
- Identify your views about some typical life situations that create stress in you. Typically, these will be the judgements about ourselves, about the people around us and about the situations we are in. These are strong beliefs that run in the background in any life situation.
- Look at the veracity of that view. Playback the situation or incident that led to you having a particular view about yourself, others, life etc. Is that the only view you can have about it? Are there alternate views that can be equally valid? When we see that there can be other views, giving significance to one view of life will not be strong anymore.
- Decide to drop your judgements about these situations. Just the decision to change your perception of something is powerful enough to free you of the stress that the belief is causing in you.
We experience stress when we flow against the current (having judgements), not when we flow with it (being judgement free). In this case, you will be informed by your life experience and not be influenced by it.
It is very powerful to be in tune with ourselves and life around us. It saves energy and opens up our creativity and potential. All the energy that was lost in distraction and stress is now available for focused effort and productivity. We lose our small identity with all of its struggles when we flow with the intelligent current of Life. It helps us tremendously to reach the mindful state of restful awareness from which we witness and engage with events around us without getting stressed out by them.
We really have nothing to lose by trying, except our stress! Decide not to be stressed about stress!
