About stress
About stress, psychologist William James said this:
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
I sort of stopped by to read a post by J.D. Meier (Sources of Insight). It was an OK piece about dealing
Finding out about stress
with stress. Didn’t make me feel any stress. Since I didn’t feel any, I can’t say that it helped me release any, either.
I can say that it got me to think about stress. Reminded me of the William James quotation I have long admired. Then out of nowhere I realized that stress and rain have 2 things in common.
First, you/I/we cannot prevent either one of them. If it’s meant to, rain or stress it happens. If I am planning to play golf and it rains, both happen.
Second, while you cannot prevent either, you don’t have to hang out with either. Coming in out of the rain is not rocket science. And letting stress go isn’t either.
Some of you are probably thinking that a third commonality between stress and rain is that either one can have positive results, no matter how we feel about it when it happens. Rain grows things and it fills reservoirs. Stress increases our attention to whatever’s causing it, and we feel better when it’s gone. That’s for a later post, maybe.
Back to talking about stress
There are a large number of specific practices to release or relieve stress. Check Google.
I believe all those practices can be placed in 4 anti-stress categories. Avoiding. Denying. Defusing. Dissolving. Having gone so far as naming the categories, I will add that the categories have different rates of success.
Avoiding stress gets the lowest score because avoiding it merely means that it’s still around and may (likely will) return.
Denying stress almost ties with Avoiding for the lowest score simply because denial is not truthful and it’s not healthy.
Defusing stress can be reasonably successful. Allowing distractions or intense concentration or meaningful efforts to work the stress out can be productive.
Dissolving stress is a close but more successful cousin to Defusing. Dissolving stress is seeing it for what it’s worth–usually nothing–and viewing it as morning fog as the sun rises.
So the above was on topic but a little off target. Excuse me for that.
Some knowledge bits about stress
By the way, you may know there are two kinds of stress, one positive (eustress) and one negative (distress). All this is about the latter.
If (when!) you have stress to deal with, it can help to keep in mind that the ubiquitous cause is uncertainty. Think about the last time or the last 20 times you felt stress. Probably really originated from some sort of uncertainty. About getting someplace on time. Whether you would pass the test. If you had enough money in the account. When the guests would arrive.
Uncertainty is not an emotion. Stress isn’t either. Fear is. Uncertainty is a situation and from that situation we react with the emotion of fear. We’re afraid of being late or failing the test or not having the money or if the guests will be late…or not even show up. Stress is the physical reaction to the emotion, fear.
Pushing love
Love is an emotion, too. Difference between love and fear is that one IS and the other ISN’T. Love is a truth, a reality, even a presence (a Presence). Fear is the absence of love. When love is not present–better said, when we perceive that love is not present–we generate fear in love’s absence.
So, the simple truth is that love is key to releasing stress. But we need actions to motorize the love, to express the love, to return the love to our consciousness so that fear is ousted.
Some what-to-do actions
May I offer five very simple, easy actions. Don’t be surprised that they have “pray” in common.
- Pray. However you normally pray, do it. But if you pray to get rid of stress, don’t do it that way. Instead, pray affirming love’s presence, love is around you, above you, beneath you, behind you, before you and most importantly within you. It’s ok to pray that as often as you want.
- Pray with someone. You can pray with them, to them, for them; and they can do any or all of those in reverse. It can be over the phone or face to face (masked or socially distant if you’re not in the same safe circle). Let yourself be conscious of the love shared; sharing love is part of praying.
- Pray in some different way. You get to decide this. If you never pray while walking, pray while walking. Pray with your eyes wide open if you always pray with them closed. If your praying voice is always a whisper, pray out loud. You’ll pay more attention to what’s not normal. That will let you pay attention to the love, which is so normal!
- Pray with music. It can be playing in the background. Hymnal or rock-and-roll, vocal or instrumental. You may even want to sing along by singing your prayer.
- Pray with nature. Let the praying happen outside of yourself, outside of your mind, outside of your being while you know it’s coming from your heart. The trees and grass, clouds and hills, fields and flowers
And though I would love to take you on a walk, pipe in some music and coloring book a prayer for you here and now, the “reality” of time and space doesn’t let me. So I offer my prayer of thanks for all the ways we can pray the fullness of love.
Thanks for Praying about Stress
Loving Source of Love,
How thankful I am to understand stress
as something natural
and something I can release in many ways
more than the few listed here.
Thank you that communicating with you, with the universe,
with the spirit of All, with your continuing creation
brings my consciousness of love to the beat of my heart
and to the front of my mind.
It doesn’t matter if I pray aloud, with my eyes wide open
or shut, walking through the woods, or sitting in traffic.
The simple, sweet act of praying lets me know love.
Love lights away the darkness that fear brings,
the darkness where stress resides.
Thank you, Spirit that is Love.
And so it is. And so we’re glad it is. Amen.
Love & blessings,
25 February 2021
In: Inner Peace, Peacefulness, Prayer · Tagged with: Peace, spiritual simplicity
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