Breaking Your Back?
Your Word? Someone’s Heart?
Did you know “STRESS” costs employers over $300 Billion a year?
After 35 years of teaching stress management to business and healthcare professionals, I believe ALL suffering comes from some form of self-induced stress. And studies I’ve seen show that more than 7 out of 10 doctors agree.
Stress does not come from outside sources. Nothing and no one can MAKE us stressful. Stress comes from INSIDE (and until it becomes negative stress, or DIS-stress, it’s not always bad; without positive stress, you’d fall out of your chair!)
Some of us clearly work too hard physically, and suffer physical consequences: backaches, headaches, pulled muscles, sore feet, cut and calloused hands, aching fingers, an increasingly-wrinkled brow –and of course more– can all take their toll. Ask any roofer!
- We blame every thing and every body outside of ourselves all along the way, truly feeling like we are, in fact, “breaking our backs.”
- Yet others of us may put ourselves in the mental/emotional stress-inducing position “between a rock and a hard place” when something happens (or fails to) that causes us to break our WORD.
But unlike the physical “break your back” labor, “breaking your word” is most often accompanied by tightened muscles, mental distractions, angry feelings, feelings of incompetence or inadequacy, emotional outbursts and mental stress, to name just a few symptoms.
- Breaking someone’s HEART can be the most destructive stress of all — and especially if it comes packaged with either and/or both of the above circumstances.
Most human beings (and, I believe, many animals) have had their hearts broken somewhere along the path of life, and know that this is the most traumatizing of all experiences because it goes to the very core of every creature’s emotional existence. And it often triggers an avalanche of mental, emotional AND physical stress!
Regardless of the source we attribute to increased stress— whether physical, intellectual, or emotional– we often head for the nearest relief.
This runs the gamut between medicine cabinets, then drugstores (or dealers), alcohol, tobacco, fortune-tellers, natural healing practitioners, dieticians and chiropractors, primary care physicians, and hopefully, we avoid hospitals and surgery… until next time.
BUT THE BOTTOM LINE is that:
A) Behavior is a choice! That choice can be the moment of upset, or the result of a choice made even years earlier. It is nonetheless, a choice. That being the case, it can be just as easy to make the choice –at the moment of upset– to NOT break your back, choose to NOT break your word, choose to NOT break a heart.
B) The “HOW-TO” of choosing to reverse direction to get better results dictates that your mind be in the present moment, not dwelling on anything more than a minute old (or a minute into the future). It can admittedly be difficult to conjure up present-moment awareness in the midst of trauma . . . unless you choose for it to be easy!
C) The best, easiest, most-effective way to choose a non-stress-imposing action or thought to eliminate or minimize the trauma of the moment is to first: be aware of and acknowledge your upset feelings, and remind yourself that you are choosing them, then: second…
D) Follow the simple, quick, discreet (the more you practice, the less noticeable) steps outlined HERE . Your persistence at doing this even for a minute, even while in a discussion, will calm your nervous system and send more oxygen to your brain. It works no matter what age, physical condition, or type of upset feelings.
MORE?
Give me a call. I run sessions like this by phone,
and in person with employee groups and teams
for the results of employee stress.
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hal@businessworks.US
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931.854.0474 Coaching for Higher Branding Impact
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