Stress: Problem or Symptom?

My first post is my first post because of the importance of the topic.

STRESS!

Stress as a Choice - Part One

I’d like you to know the root cause of stress -- to be able to treat the problem, and not just the symptoms. I’ll address a number of stress-reduction techniques on another post, but I want to focus on the idea of stress itself.

Stress is a choice and you create it because it serves you in some way.

Let me repeat that. Stress is a choice and you create it because it serves you in some way. Now this may be a hard pill to swallow for anyone.

In the vein of treating the problem rather than only the symptoms, I have come to treating stress, ‘the problem’ rather than only the symptoms. Coming to accepting stress as a choice will be hard to believe for someone who wants to hold on to their stress, for someone who subconsciously wants their stress. If you give it a chance, if you step away from yourself and become an observer you will give yourself a chance to not only believe this idea of stress as a choice, but you will experience it. There is a gap as large as the Grand Canyon between believing and knowing. We see this in people’s faith as well. Believers’ struggle with their spiritual values and those who KNOW have a passion for theirs.

So what I am asking today is that you suspend your beliefs while reading my thoughts on stress. This is not hard to do, it is something you have done before. You go to a movie and suspend your belief for that period of time – you aren’t thinking this is a two-dimensional illumination of light on a screen. You feel the feelings, you cry, your heart races. After the movie, you re-enter your old belief system and go to your car. You can do that here too, though I hope that you will test my theories to see if they are true, rather than spending your energy defending your old belief system.

Remember that rationalization is the second greatest urge for a human being. (No, sex is not the first, it’s survival.) You will automatically want to maintain your status quo. It is human nature to rationalize the way we are and to defend and protect that belief system, but I ask you to take a chance.

What I propose is that instead of managing stress you eliminate it.

Live a life that does not have stress, but instead has peace and calm.
Stress is not a problem - it is a symptom.

Thoughts are the problem – change your thoughts and you change your stress. The stress I speak of is internal stress. I am not speaking of earthquakes, volcanoes, and even gravity. They are external stresses. You may think a death in the family is an external stress. Not really, it is how we react to the death. I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel sad and grieve. Just know the difference between internal and external stress.

It’s not so much what happens to us but what we do with what happens to us.