10 ways to enjoy your stress more.Written by Michael Dimas
1. The Mentor Method: think of your favorite person. Someone you love, admire, trust, like a mentor or someone from your spiritual tradition. Simply thinking about them will help you change your focus from stress hooey to a more desirable response associated with your favorite person. Also, you do not need to wait to get stressed out to do this as thinking of your hero's always makes you feel better. Pictures of family and loved ones also help so make sure you have these at work. Think of happy and/or silly times you've had with these people. Feel better already don't you? Good. Now relax, take a deep breath and enjoy yourself even more as you read on... 2. Create Worry zones and Stress times: pick a specific location for your worry party and limit yourself to this location for things worth worrying about. Get serious. Get wigged out. Get ready to worry! Do your rants/raves only in this place you have chosen and for time you have specified. That's right, there is a time limit to moaning/groaning! When stuff happens that you habitually worry about then go to your zone and take care of business. Remember time limit...5 minutes max. If this does not seem like enough time then you must get better at worrying in a shorter time frame! Behave yourself everywhere else. Make sure zone is not a place where you spend most of your time or has other people in it. Keep kitchen and family room as cheerful as possible. The bedroom is for sleeping and other pleasant activities so no worrying is allowed there. Ditto for office, bathroom, car, church meetings, movies, restaurants, etc. Pick only one place for worry zone. 3. Use " hello to life" activities to break out of your routines that produce stress. One of my favorite people, Truman Madsen, introduced me to this one. Do something radically different that is enjoyable. For example, instead of walking/worrying do some skipping instead. It's OK to continue with worrying but your main focus should be on skipping. You skipped as a kid. It's time to do it again. Not only will you feel better but just think how ridiculous you'll look to other's who see you skipping in your work clothes, carrying a briefcase and talking on phone at same time! At very least, it will make others feel better! They may not realize you are angry or worried. They'll simply think you are nuts. 4. Touch your nose: yes, you heard me. First, get yourself in a great state like hilarity. Get yourself laughing and goofing around feeling terrific. In this peak state of enjoyment, touch your nose. Get others in on this and make yourselves laugh more and more frequently touching your nose as you laugh, giggle, smile. This creates a neurological "anchor" where your brain associates good feelings of laughing and goofing around with touching your nose. In future, you may simply touch your nose to create good feelings. If you do this a lot you may learn to enjoy your stress. Warning: touching other people on nose when they are pissed off does not really help that much so touch your own nose only. 5. Howl and hallucinate: imagine those that you are blaming for your stress. What would they look like if you started howling at them during stress episode? Imagine look on their face when you howled with glee. Imagine look on your in-laws faces when you howl in their kitchen. Imagine look on your boss' face when you howl standing on your desk. Imagine look on those folks waiting in line at grocery store when you howl like a maniac. Need to spice up your romantic life? Next time you are in midst of that romantic stuff just start howling. Your wife will think you are a stud muffin. Your husband will think you are a hotty.
| | WisdomWritten by Laurent Grenier
What is wisdom? But first, what are conditions that render it desirable, if not necessary, and what is its essential purpose? Life is a desire to live, and better still a desire to live happily. As we strive to satisfy this desire, we encounter obstacles that complicate or frustrate our efforts. This complication or frustration amounts to suffering because it stands in way of satisfaction. Wisdom is designed to help us cope with this suffering. It is an adaptive product of reason in face of tough circumstances. Thanks to it, happiness is conceivable and achievable in spite of everything. It is therefore supreme good. Actually, religion is a good that many rank equally high, since it serves same purpose as wisdom, if differently. The difference lies in way religion and wisdom portray suffering and define meaning of life. From perspective of religion, suffering betrays a state of worldly imperfection that is in contradiction with human desire for perfect happiness. Consequently, life here below – where humans are doomed to suffer – is absurd in itself. Or rather, life is meaningful strictly in terms of means to a heavenly end in great beyond: A life of virtue prepares way for an afterlife of bliss. The religious believe this in accordance with teachings of an inspired spiritual leader, who claims to know transcendental nature of hereafter. While personally I cast a skeptical eye on these teachings, I keep my mind open. They are highly suspicious, but transcendental nature of their object puts them beyond reach of any discredit based on conclusive evidence. Anyway, as I see it, wisdom is independent of religion, though it can complement latter. According to it, life in itself has meaning, despite its imperfection that people can learn to accept. Better still, they can learn to value this imperfection as they realize that perfection, contrary to popular belief, is not infinitely desirable. Indeed, perfect happiness leaves something to be desired. By definition, it excludes suffering and hence all forms of complication or frustration. It supposes that circumstances are absolutely favorable – that is, not tough in any way. Therefore, no effort is necessary while every dream is possible. At first glance, this sounds like most wonderful situation imaginable, and yet taking another look at it will dispel this illusion.
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