Be happy - Deal with stress successfully

People are capable of being stressed for just about anything. What can we do about it? We don’t need to do anything about stress; stress is like friction in a machine. There is friction in the machine because there is no proper movement of the parts, or there is not enough lubrication. The less friction you have, the more efficient the machine becomes. While stress, of any kind, is undeniably damaging, there are many things we can do to reduce its impact and cope with symptoms.

Now, we are not looking at how to manage stress, and how to keep it under the surface. We need to do how to avoid its creation. Actually, stress is our creation because we try to take up all the things, all the matters more seriously than they deserve individually. We can fix up the priorities.

How to manage stress

Sometime, we feel that the stress in our life is out of our control, but we can always control the way we respond. Managing stress is all about taking charge: taking charge of our thoughts, our emotions, our time management, our environment, and the way we deal with problems. Stress management involves changing the stressful situation when we can, changing our reaction when we can’t, taking care of ourselves, and making time for rest and relaxation. There are other tools also.

We can strengthen our relationships.

A strong support network is our greatest protection against stress. When we have trusted friends and family members we can count on, life’s pressures don’t seem as overwhelming. So, we must spend time with the people we love and don’t let our responsibilities keep us from having a social life. If we don’t have any close relationships, or our relationships are the source of your stress, we should make it a priority to build stronger and more satisfying connections. We can build up our relationships by helping someone else by volunteering, having lunch or coffee with a co-worker, calling or contacting an old friend, going for a walk with a workout buddy, scheduling a weekly dinner date and/or taking a class or joining a club.

We may try to relax.

We can’t completely eliminate stress from our life, but we can control how much it affects us. Relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing activate the body’s relaxation response, a state of restfulness that is the opposite of the stress response. When practiced regularly, these activities lead to a reduction in our everyday stress levels and a boost in our feelings of joy and serenity. They also increase our ability to stay calm and collected under pressure. We may find that solution within six weeks, there is a considerable drop in our pulse rate, heart-beat, in the way our system functions, because our whole system will start functioning at ease. When the very nature of our existence becomes easy, we would be restful all the time. Then, there would be no such thing as stress. Restfulness is the basis of all activity. We can be most effective in our life only when everything is at complete ease within. If our ability to act becomes effortless, naturally there is no such thing as stress.

We need to look at the fundamental mechanics of life, why are our body and mind not doing what we want them to do. If we do a process of yoga, it needs to be in its full depth and dimension, not just the physicality of it. It is neither physical nor mental; it has got something to do with the core of our life. If all of us is not involved in the yoga that we do, if it has not been transmitted to us, it has just been taught to us, it is a bundle of instructions, not an initiation – if that is so, we are misusing yoga – would we, for instance, use an airplane as we would a car?
Yoga is not a solution for our stress – there is no need for stress. Yoga is the removal of the problem. We don’t create stress anymore, that’s all. If we don’t create stress, then why do we need a solution for it? Stress is our making. So if we get a little deeper access to the experience of life within us, we will distinctly know this and we will drop it.

Yoga transforms and liberates human beings so that they can reach this unbounded state. Humans, unlike animals, do not merely exist. They are becoming. To evolve as a human being is to become aware of one’s limitations; to strive, with intense passion, towards the transcendence for which we all have the potential. The emphasis of yoga, therefore, is not on the external and perceivable areas of endeavour, which lead to bondage and limitation, but on the inner and intangible fields, which lead to freedom and perfection. It involves the transformation of a limited being into an unbounded one.

We must invest in our emotional health.
Most people ignore their emotional health until there’s a problem. But just as it requires time and energy to build or maintain our physical health, so it is with our emotional well-being. The more we put in to it, the stronger it will be. People with good emotional health have an ability to bounce back from stress and adversity. This ability is called resilience. They remain focused, flexible, and positive in bad times as well as good. The good news is that there are many steps we can take to build our resilience and our overall emotional health.

The people who are mentally and emotionally healthy have a sense of contentment, a zest for living and the ability to laugh and have fun, the ability to deal with stress and bounce back from adversity, a sense of meaning and purpose, in both their activities and their relationships, the flexibility to learn new things and adapt to change, a balance between work and play, rest and activity, etc., the ability to build and maintain fulfilling relationships, self-confidence and high self-esteem. These positive characteristics of mental and emotional health allow you to participate in life to the fullest extent possible through productive, meaningful activities and strong relationships. These positive characteristics also help you cope when faced with life's challenges and stresses.

Be Happy – We must deal with stress successfully.