Stress Management

STRESS MANAGEMENT

      Stress is a form of tension in the body or mind, for which there is no release or outlet. When one is under stress, one is like a car in neutral gear with the accelerator on, trying to exert internally.

      The primary cause of psychosomatic diseases is our thoughts, attitudes and beliefs. For example, one might supress anger and eventually develop mental depression; another might supress anger and eventually develop migraine headaches and so on. Even though the development of the disease is unique to each individual, the underlying principles are same.

      Is Stress then a very dangerous word? No. Stress is an essential ingredient for the normal functioning of the body. Many people don’t realize it, but stress is very natural and important part of life. We need stress (eustress) but not too much stress for too long (distress). Eustress helps us to remain alert, motivates to face challenges and drive to solve problem. Distress, on the other hand, results when our body over reacts when something beyond the capacity of body or mind is expected of us, then the healthy eustress turns into distress.

Causes of Stress

Physical - Faulty Diet(Coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs, sweets, chilies, spices, pickles, meat, cigar, tobacco) activate stress. Although they titillate the tongue and give an artificial sense of elevation or relaxation, they increase Stress. A faulty posture causes Stress.

Mental - We get mental stress due to various reasons such as certain behaviour of people, working with deadlines, when somebody cheats or insults us etc. This results in disproportionate anger, unnecessary fears, excessive hatred, meaningless worry etc.

Environmental - Too much heat or cold, pollution, over-crowded trains or buses also affects us. How much we get affected depends on our body resistance or stamina. That is why different people seem to be affected in different degrees under the same environmental conditions.

Work-related Stress - Urgency addiction, Interpersonal conflicts, Multitasking, Unrealistic targets, Unhealthy competition, Overexertion and irregular food habits are main reasons.

Effects of Stress

Physical - Heart Disease, constant fatigue, stiff neck and back ache, ulcers, indigestion, diarrhea, headaches and fatigue etc.

Mental - Lack of concentration, forgetfulness, difficulty in making decisions, confusion, panic attacks etc.

Behavioural - Restlessness, irritable, rage, increased smoking, drinking, committing suicide.

Threat and Perceived Threat

      There is a clear difference between a Real Physical threat and Perceived threat. If you

• suddenly find a snake at night in your room
• your doctor reveals to you that you may have to go for a by-pass surgery
• suddenly you find that a fire breaks out in your kitchen

All these are real situations and there is a threat for life.

      There many other situations that our mind perceives as Threat, which are not threat at all! These are depends on ones outlook to life.

• Someone disagreed with you opinion.
• Somebody failed to offer you respects
• Your name was missed out in one of the office publications by mistake
• You faced failure in a competitive examination
• You were not invited to stage and recognized for some good work that you have done

These are life-threatening situations for the mind is looking for a comfortable circumstance.

      There are three things that we all have to do – Planning, Working and Interacting. Those who only plan are ‘day dreamers’, those who only work are ‘workaholics’, those who only interact are ‘popular’ amongst many but they end up doing nothing tangible. An ideal situation would be when one can plan well and execute ones duties.

Eight practical tips for Positive Thinking

• Give up unreasonable expectations.
• Right definition of success.
• Give up unhealthy comparison.
• Count the blessings of God upon you.
• Don’t be overly bothered about what world thinks of you.
• Tolerate the ‘svabhava’ or nature of others.
• Give up the blame game; see sunny side of people and things.
• Desires should not be expressed or supressed but sublimated.

Ten tips to manage the mind

      In nature, whenever we suffer there is a root cause. Prescribed solutions like time management, regular exercise, healthy diet, relaxation may help reduce stress in the short-term but they do not provide real solution to the problem. If you get a terrible foul smell in a room, you may put air fresheners to hide the smell but you can’t remove it completely unless you find out the root cause.

• Keep yourself busy – “An idle man’s brain is devil’s workshop”. The creative faculty in human mind makes one think of our problems aggressively. So be busy by doing selfless service to God and humans.
• Break helps. Turn to nature or music – Music therapy calms mind. Music has a soothing and calming effect on the mind. A break from complex modern life can help reduce stress.
• Control your anger – Anger is one letter short of DANGER. During Anger, Intellect says goodbye and goes away. Somehow let out your anger like a stream valve, by properly communicating and revealing your heart without blowing up or losing temper.
• Communicate – We don’t reveal our feelings and don’t hear others when e hurt. This will change to a negative stress since there is no action plan. Open up yourself and explain your feelings. Don’t try to win the argument.
• Do not personalise issues – One who does not respond according to your expectations is not your enemy. Treat each event separately. Once an unpleasant event happens, learn some lessons from it and close the chapter.
• Different people have different natures – To expect everyone to behave the same way is to ask for the impossible. Not only different people, even the same person reacts differently under different situations. Do not try to bind others entirely to your liking. 
• Don’t be judgmental about people – You can pass judgments over events, not about the people involved. No one likes to be permanently labelled as a ‘bad’ ‘uncooperative’ ‘dull’ ‘aggressive’ ‘incompetent’ person.
• Discipline your desires – When your desires are less than your assets then you are rich. When your desires exceed your assets you are poor. The real happiness lies in accepting whatever is needed for keeping body and soul together.
• See sunny side of things – Dealing with people is like digging gold; when you go digging for an ounce of gold, you have to move tons of dirt to get an ounce of gold. But when you go digging, you don’t go looking for the dirt, you go looking for the gold. There is something positive in every person, so look for that.
• Seek social support – We need trustworthy friends to open out and communicate to take help. Join the local communities so that one can open one’s heart and take help. With rich satisfying relationships one can experience love, respect and trust. In such an atmosphere, stress will abscond from you.

Seven Golden rules of Vedas to reduce Stress

      The scriptures offer a rich treasure of lessons from the histories of great personalities who have encounter different difficult situations in their lives, and have acted appropriately and inappropriately. These histories are not meant to be read and thrown like novels, but are meant for offering us practical guidance in our everyday life. The following tips are a few of them that can help us bring about a great transformation of consciousness.

1. Live in the present
2. Don’t regret the past
3. Don’t day dream the future
4. Our material life is a game, nothing is really important
5. Life is like a train journey
6. Give up false ego
7. Don’t stress yourself to impress others

Note: The above article is an extract from  below mentioned book. Hope, this article is useful to the readers.

Book : Stress Management

Author : Radheshyam das

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