Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Stress . . .

When a situation is viewed as a threat, the body’s fight-or-flight syndrome is activated. More energy goes to the muscles and brain, to the exclusion of other organs. The body literally tears away at its inner structure to deal with the threat. For humans, the alarm system is called into play, and persists, when there is a psychological threat. One who allows this problem to hang on can cause rebalancing, the return to the normal relaxed state, not to occur.

How to Let Go
It takes a while to recover from a moment of terror. The same is true of experiencing a severely stressful event. But it can be done; here’s how:

1. Learn to sort out positive stress from that which can actually harm you. Some stress actually keeps you healthy. Positive stress is produced by experiences that are challenging, exciting, arousing or fun, or that which gives life purpose and meaning. Healthful stress is the body’s way of adapting to the constant changes of life.

2. Change your expectations. The difference between expectations and perception of reality is the measure of how much stress you will experience. If you begin the day with the attitude of "The world is changing, health is getting better, and nothing stays the same," and you truly believe that to be so, you will experience very little stress if it so happens that expectations are not met. Neither the environment nor your own performance will unreasonably displease you.

Note: Do not allow your expectations to exceed your perceptions of reality.

3. Do relaxation exercises. The purpose of these is to get the focus on a nonlogical part of the body. It is the constant logical planning and rumination that keeps stress going. The best nonlogical part to focus on is breathing. Proper breathing triggers other parts of the body to relax. The body is born with the innate ability to produce the opposite of the stress response.

Stop Unwanted Thoughts
The average person produces more than 200 negative thoughts a day—worries, jealousies, insecurities, cravings for forbidden things, etc. (Depressed people will have up to 600!) You can’t eliminate all the troublesome thoughts that go through your mind, but you can certainly reduce them, both in number and severity. Here’s how:

1. When a negative thought begins to surface in your mind, pause. Stop what you are doing for a few seconds. Do not say anything—talk will only reinforce the bad feeling.

2. Take five deep, slow breaths. By taking in more oxygen, you flush out your system and lower your level of anxiety. If you do this correctly, you will approach a meditative state.

3. Concentrate on a pleasant, relaxing scene—a walk throughout the mountains, for example. Take two to three minutes for a minor trouble, up to ten minutes for a serious upset.

Use this technique continually until the upsetting thoughts begin to decrease. Many things are beyond your control, but there are many things you can control. How you handle your thoughts is one of them. By paying more attention to what you can control will help you to lead a more productive life. In return you will have greater amounts of happiness, and live in better health.

Visit my site today to learn positively how to to release yourself forever from chronic stress.