There just seem to be too many things happening at once.
You know you’re stressed and looking for stress management techniques.
You’re overwhelmed.
You brain is foggy. You can’t seem to get a handle on what to do.
You know there is a solution as other women appear to being, doing and having it all.
Perhaps it’s easy.
Here are some of the best meditation ideas that you can implement.
You just don’t seem to be able to apply the focus, discipline and planning strategies you once did.
Something’s happened. You feel you are falling apart at the seams.
How are you going to approach this?
How Full is Your Stress Barrel?
Humans create all kinds of dramas in their lives.
Yet. What affects one person may not affect another.
However, we all seem to know that there is a limit to the factors which impinge on our mental, emotional and physical health.
When we reach that limit, our stress barrel will be filled to overflowing. When this happens something’s got to give.
We get symptoms. But sometimes we try to ignore those signals.
Sometimes we have to pay attention. We might get a sore throat, the flu, exhaustion, mental fog, being quick to anger and so on. These symptoms are the clues that your emotional aspect is trying to tell your physical body, that you need to stop what you are doing.
Symptoms arise because our stress barrel is full. The clue is then to stop and take something out of that barrel so there is more wriggle room for you to be able to cope more easily. To heal, physically, mentally and emotionally. The more you can take out of the barrel, the less you will be affected by stress.
However, just taking things out may stop the over-run of things that create physical stress. However, that may not be enough to build resilience to stress.
How to Build Your Resilience to Stress
Resilience is like building the well so that your threshold for being affected by stress is stronger. It also means that when you do become affected by stress, that you will be able to bounce back more easily. So, the effects of having built resilience are twofold.
Moving from a position of stress over-load to being resilient means you need to change how you do things. You need to become really clear about who you are, what you want and how to go about this. It’s like a project. A new job.
You have to go back to those initial skills you had when you first got your ideal job or career. You had skills. You had plans. You had strategies. It’s about focusing on one thing at a time.
Successful career women are adopting this new approach. They know that they achieved their present position because they took certain steps, in order, one at a time. Clearing up the debris. The thoughts that were holding you back. The habits that were limiting. The attitudes, language and actions that were self-centred, not outwardly focused, helpful to others, a team player.
So, when you go back and remember those steps you took, clearing things up one at a time, you know, from personal experience that you will eventually get into flow. That state where everything comes easily and effortlessly to you. You will be on the right path, for you.
So, this approach is about having a new strategy to permanently resolve stress issues, one at a time.
1. What is the Single Most Basic Physiological Aspect You Can Repair That Will Give You The Greatest Benefit?
The first step is to get your stress barrel clear of all miscellaneous debris that can help you on the road to being stress resistant.
Clearing the stress barrel can be likened to repairing your body/mind. You need to undertake clearing the subconscious of some of the automatic stress response habits that have been ingrained since early childhood. These are like tree stumps. A tiny bit visible on top, but the roots are spread out and deeply embedded in the ground.
You have to dig out those stumps in order to be able to clear the subconscious. Just the biggest ones. One at a time.
In practical terms, what this means is changing our default position from a negative state to a positive state. For example, if you are expressing negativity in any aspect of your life: being fearful, having doubt, being a victim, being quick to anger, feeling a lack of worth, feeling exhausted, lacking in energy and losing focus and clarity — all of these negative states mean you are stuck in that state.
These negative states might be the first ones you’ve learned during your formative years.
Being trapped in any of those states (and many, many more), means your stress barrel continues to fill up as you repeat those patterns of thoughts, and feeling, over and over. Generally, not knowing that you are doing this. Seemingly, not knowing how to stop these. And. Not knowing that you can alter your thoughts and feelings to being more positive.
To break this cycle means you have to train yourself to do this. To break these negative stress response patterns, you need to stop how you react when you encounter a stressful event or situation.
You firstly have to retrain yourself to breathe correctly. Then you need to feed your heart (your body/mind) with positive emotions.
How do you do that?
As you breathe in and out for five, breathing slowly and deeply from the lower belly, (not lifting the shoulders or chest), you can then breathe in positive emotions such as: peace, inner ease, appreciation or gratitude.
These two actions: breathing correctly and nourishing your heart with love will, over time, help you repair your physiology and your automatic response to stressor triggers.
You will feel better about yourself. You will have gained a sense of having more time because you will have slowed down the automatic stress response mechanism. You will feel more positive. Eventually this will be your new default position.
2. What Can You Release From Your Life That Also Has A Huge Impact on Your Stress Barrel?
The second step in helping you create resistance to stress is to clear out the gunk which lies at the very bottom of your stress barrel.
You have to dig down and excavate all of the excess gunk that is crowding your bareel. That which lies at the bottom of your stress barrel and which keeps feeding your psyche with thoughts and feelings that help create and maintain your stress.
The gunk represents the major beliefs you’ve created during childhood. Mostly of which you are unaware. That keep running your life.
If you continue to react to situations, events and people in the same way, it means there is a belief that you are running, in a set pattern, that needs to be released in order. You need to be able to break the pattern, the habit, so that you can then consciously choose a better way of responding.
At the root of the gunk, which most people hold, are several common beliefs. Some of which affect most people, at some time, for most of their lives. These beliefs are: not being good enough, not being worthy or not feeling loved.
These negative beliefs that we hold about ourselves, have ingrained since early childhood. We have attracted experiences that justify us holding that particular belief. Repetition of experiences cements our beliefs. The unfortunate thing is that these beliefs still run our adult lives. In order to move forward you need to eliminate some of these.
These negative beliefs will be evident if you are to examine how and why you react to certain situations, and the manner in which you respond. We demean ourselves and others. We project onto others.
How successful career women are resolving those issues is by seeking help from therapist trained in eliminating negative beliefs.
The good news is you don’t have to deal with everything. Just like a deck of cards, a domino effect. Releasing the major ones will allow others to be released as the same time.
3. Is there Anything That Can Be Renewed in Your Life?
The third step in clearing out your stress barrel and helping you build your resistance to the external effects of stress, is, that you now need to construct your foundations.
You have cleared your stress barrel of the basic debris (retrained yourself to come from a new position of positivity), and have excavated the gunk at the bottom of the barrel (released those beliefs that keep you stuck in repetitive negative behaviour patterns), now you can build the foundations for your new approach to dealing with stress.
What this means physically and emotionally, for you, is that you will now be operating at a higher vibration. You will be feeling better. You will now feel you have the wherewithall and the energy to change things in your life that contribute to keeping your stress barrel full.
This step is a combination of taking out those excess foods, drink and substances that are, quite literally, slowly killing you. They are either toxic themselves or are creating toxins. They are damaging your health, physically and mentally.
Having already gone through the first two stages of constructing a more solid foundation to a life more resistant to stress, you will feel better. Enough to be able to implement dietary and exercise changes that will help you regain your strength. Renew your cells. Your vibrancy. Your mental toughness through renewing your physiology.
In this step you might start out with a simple step by eliminating foods/substances that are detrimental to your health. You might start with eliminating added sugar.
You then might progress to a way of eating that is more healthful, e.g. by adopting a Mediterranean diet. Or simply by adding more protein and vegetables daily, and, by cutting out empty carbs such as chips, bread or cakes.
It’s a process. A little at a time.
Once you have a handle on that, you might start to physically, move more. You might try walking at a faster, more deliberate pace.
The key to this renewal stage is to make it manageable and enjoyable. So you have a sense of achievement, a sense of increased wellness.
4. Know Yourself First — Recreate Who You Are at Your Core
The fourth step in clearing out your stress barre and building that resistance to stress so that you eventually get into a state of flow, is to architecturally design the overall look and feel of the new you. What’s inside. Understanding yourself so that new you is supported by your foundations you are now creating.
It’s like building a new structure for your life. You will now have solid foundations on which to build that new structure.
Most people do not understand the structure of their life. How they operate. What they do and why. In particular, what they could be doing, more easily and effortlessly, such that they can create more positive outcomes.
Most people struggle or strain against rules and regulations without questioning why this is so.
It has been found that approximately 87% of people are in the wrong job — for their personality type. What this means, practically, is t that they are performing tasks which are not suited to their profile, at least 80% of the time. When this happens, they come up against people and barriers that oppose who they are, and what they are doing. They struggle with these things.
This creates conflict externally and internally. It creates most of the stress at work.
So, the key is to be able to other find a position in which you are doing what you are good at, at least 80% of the time. Or. Be able to engineer better and more suitable tasks with your managers or supervisors, in the job you already have.
If that is not possible, then you need to be able to express your innate skills, talents and abilities in another way. Through your family. Your social life. Your hobbies. Or through voluntary work.
You see, when you are operating out of your innate skills, the skills you were born with, at least 80% of the time, you will enjoy your work. It will be easy. You will move towards a position of flow. Things will come to you easily and effortlessly. Because of this you will be more successful.
So, in order to get your structure right so that you can build that perfect new life, a life which is resilient to stress, you need to find out what you are good at.
There are a couple of ways to do this. Self-observation to sense how you feel when you are doing a task. Or. Ask other people what they think you are good at.
However, the easier way is to take a personality profiling assessment which will point you in the right direction, immediately.
5. Having Re-Built Your Resilience to Stress from the Ground Up You Are Now Ready to Reclaim This New Life
The final step in building your new life so that your stress barrel keeps emptying and you are continuing to build resistance to stress, is, you now want to be very specific about how each individual aspect of your life looks. The layout. The design. The people. The status. The ideal career. How you want to appear to self and others.
You want the end result to be a reflection of who you are. What you like. What you think is important. The look and feel of your newly designed life, is a statement about you. About what you value.
Because you have:
* Repaired your physiology by breathing better and retraining your body/mind to be more positive
* Released those negative beliefs that keep you stuck in stress patterns that are no longer useful
* Renewed your health and well-being by adopting new ways of eating and exercising, and
* Discovered your innate skills, talents and abilities that you now need to apply to your job…
…you are now ready to reclaim your life fully and totally, by designing the aspects that you desire most.
This step is about setting goals that are aligned with your newly-cleared self, the new you. Because of this, you will be more easily able to achieve your goals because they are deliberate, well-intentioned and well-chosen to match who you are at your core.
Trying to set and achieve random goals that are not in alignment with the new you, is, a futile exercise. You will be a new person. Who is now in control of your life. Who has reduced your stress barrel and deliberately built resilience to stresses that will have kept you from achieving your goals.
You will now have the skills and abilities and the necessarily cleared foundations to be able to achieve the goals you set.
There are many different ways and methods to set and achieve goals. One of the most helpful, where you set it and forget it, yet have meaningful outcomes is, by Asara Lovejoy, in her book titled The One Command.
Being Able to Resist Stress Permanently and Deliberately
Successful career women go about implementing a strategic action plan, not only to achieve success at work and in life, but also to reduce their stress and deliberately go about increasing their resilience to stress.
By taking the example of clearing out your stress barrel, from the bottom up, this outlines the process which is similar to the approach needed to resolve stress permanently. At the same time building resilience to stress. These strategies will, at the same time, be getting you into flow. Becoming stronger. More capable. Happier and more positive.
If The Barrel is Full Take Something Out to Allow for More Movement
To get your stress barrel full, takes a lot of effort, years, in fact. And. From an early age.
If you are feeling stressed, having a foggy brain, low energy or feeling exhausted, then start by taking something out of the barrel to alleviate that situation. Decide what that is for you. Then choose.
Feeling less stressed. Feeling better. Can be simple.
Building a designer life starts with that first step.
You can do this. Just start.
Take that first step — whatever that is for you.
You will feel better about yourself once more.
