Stress: Stress Impacts Your Mental and Physical Health

Stress impacts your physical and mental health. You know that truth, perhaps personally. But then who doesn’t? Stress is implicated in 7 of the top leading causes of death.

People often fail to recognize early signs of stress impacting their health and well being. The sooner you become aware of the symptoms as expressions of stress, the sooner you can eliminate the cause of the stress.

You may not be able to eliminate the actual stressor. After all it could be your boss, your pet, your neighbor, etc. What you can erase is your interpretation of circumstances and behaviors that leave you feeling stressed.

Events have no meaning other than the meaning we assign to them. What if you consciously assigned different non-stressing meanings to behaviors you have, until now, seen as weighing heavily on your sanity?

I used to be very bothered by a certain person’s tapping on the steering wheel while driving. The more I allowed it to irritate me the louder it seemed. When I told that person how it affected me he said he could not help it.

Hmm. I had a choice. Continue to go bonkers when he started doing it OR refuse to let it bother me.

Here is what I discovered. If I said something when he started tap tap tapping he and I both felt aggravated and he would do it even more, telling me he could not help it.

Ah, then I decided to ignore it. Guess what. When I ignored the tapping he stopped dong it within seconds. Yes, seconds. Interesting, yes?

Then I realized I don’t have to let other little things bother me either. So gradually I found myself paying attention to what made me feel uptight and stressed. Then I had the choice about whether to continue to let it bother me or not.

In cases when I had more of a challenge disregarding behaviors I chose to remember that each and every one of us is an expression of the Divine. We are each Divine Beings living Human experiences.

When I look at someone in that Light the annoying feeling inside me dissipates. Pretty neat, the way that works!

Frankly, when I remember to look at every creature as a way that God gets to experience life, to feel as we do with five senses, my whole world looks different. Better yet, I feel at peace. And usually I find myself smiling.