Posts Tagged ‘stress management’

Daydreamer

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I just read an article that said we daydream one third to one half of our waking hours. Wow! That seems a bit high for me, but ya never know what people are really thinking eh?!

I think it’s safe to assume that just about everyone spends time daydreaming. I’m personally a fan of the daydream. I believe that a little daydreaming does a body, mind and spirit, a lot of good. A good daydream can take us from stressed out to blissed out in no time flat.

Not all daydreams are created equal though…. We’ve certainly heard a lot about visualization, and how our mind really isn’t able to differentiate a thought we deliberately create from reality. Unfortunately many of us spend time thinking, or daydreaming, about negative concerns or fears. We get into some internal mind-feedback loop and keep rehearsing things in our heads that really don’t do us much good.

Why not instead, try to spend that half of our waking time daydreaming of possibilities that can have a positive impact on our lives now.

If you are going to let your mind wander, let it wander into a place that can lift you up and move you forward. Our imagination is such a powerful tool, lets use it for good not evil!

And, don’t toss out the good old daydream of things like sitting on the beach with our feet tucked into the warm sand, with the sound of the ocean gently rolling in and out. Ahhh. See that can help calm the nerves and rejuvenate the spirit with just a simple inner-movie.

Yes, I am a fan of the daydream. And you have my permission to now take a mini-mind break.

To your health and well being!

How Stress Blocks the Information We Need To Move Forward

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

In my practice I see a lot of people in the midst of high stress transition and change in their lives. Life can be stressful—lets face it—and when you are facing big changes such as loss, health issues, career changes or even getting “unstuck” from emotional processes, what goes on internally can have an astounding affect on body, mind and spirit.

One of the things that I find so fascinating about the stress response, and what I love to zone in on with my practice, is how we process information…particularly when we get stuck in life. And when we are stressed, we are stuck in a place of not perceiving that we have the tools and/or information to move us to where we want or need to be. My definition of stress is: a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources they are able to mobilize.

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Stress Management–10 Tips for Survival

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Stress is really hard to define because what stresses us out is different for everyone. With this in mind, here’s a definition of stress that I like: Stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.

In other words, people feel little stress when they have the time, experience and resources to manage a situation. They feel great stress when they think they can’t handle the demands. Stress is an experience. It is not an inevitable consequence of an event: it depends on people’s perceptions of a situation and their ability to cope with it.

Although there’s an innate stress response to unexpected events, most of the stress that we are faced with is a response, in part, to the way we think. Stress reactions from our thoughts generate the same stress response as if you were in physical danger.

The interesting thing is that it doesn’t take a major fear to stress us.  All it takes is a situation where we believe ourselves to not have the resources to manage the event at hand, big or small. Some times those “little things” that throw us over the edge are big stressors because we no longer feel we have the resources to cope.

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