9 Steps to Help Decrease Your Mental/Emotional Stress
Other steps that will help you decrease your mental/emotional stress thus help you more positively improve your total health = wholeness are:
1. TIME MANAGEMENT
2. ORGANIZATION
3. PERSONAL TIME EACH DAY
4. DON’T OVERCOMMIT
5. HAVE FUN
6. LAUGH
7. VISUAL IMAGERY/DREAM
8. JUST LET GO
9. PROPER DIET, EXERCISE AND DETOXIFICATION
1. TIME MANAGEMENT
Time is a precious commodity and it has wings to fly. We all have 24 hours in a day, so how we effectively use that time can either give us more time to spend with God, our spouse and family, or take away time so as to stress us and steal from all of these.
Two techniques that can be very helpful in managing or controlling time are:
1. A Schedule
Make one and stick to it. Do all similar activities at the same time. Let me give you and example. If a businessman is in his office starting to read through a contract and the phone rings, this interrupts him and takes his focus off his work. If his employees come in to ask him questions, again he is distracted, if he starts thinking of other things he has to get done once again another distraction. Now lets say this same person schedules a certain time for taking and making phone calls, a certain time for staff meetings and has a paper at his side at all times to jot down other things to get done, so he can keep his mind on his work. He will accomplish twice as much in his day.
2. Make A List Of The 7 Most Important Things To Get Done For The Day
Make a list of only seven things for that day and start with the most difficult or time intensive one first. When it is done your feeling of accomplishment will help you to breeze through the next six. Remember, no one remembers everything. If you don’t write it down, don’t expect it to get done!
2. ORGANIZATION
This goes along with time management. When everything is in the proper place, work becomes highly more time efficient. When time is both managed and organized, it frees up more time to be used wisely. An example of the importance of organization is if we had one million files in file cabinets that were just randomly put into the cabinets how long would it take to find the file we are looking for? Hours and hours of time would be wasted. Now if the files were filed alphabetically how long would it take to find a particular file? Maybe a couple of minutes. To be organized is to be time wise.
3. PERSONAL TIME EACH DAY
Besides having prayer/meditation quiet time each day which is vital to total health = wholeness, personal time is also important. Take at least 30 minutes each day for yourself. This can be used to listen to music, to knit, to exercise or just to taking a relaxing bath sipping some herbal tea. This time is best when it is uninterrupted and has no pressing time commitment following it. People who take time for themselves each day enjoy their days more because they always have something to look forward to.
4. DON’T OVERCOMMIT
Remember how precious time is. Keep your priorities in the proper order: Spiritual communication/communion (talking and listening to God) and family are always first. Then comes your personal quiet time, then your occupation, then extras. If you over commit things in your schedule, you invariably end up taking time away from the top priority commitments – Your relationship with God and your family. So before you commit to anything, pray on it and have your family pray on it with you. Make sure everyone is in agreement with the decisions. Do not major on the minors in life. Major on the majors, God and family.
5. HAVE FUN
Life is a journey, so enjoy it! If you’re not, do something to change it so you are. I have told many people to quit their jobs because the stress would eventually cause them to develop major health challenges. What would you do if you knew you had only one year to live? What about one month? Or even only one day? You would live life to the full and enjoy every moment of it knowing it is all a gift from God. You would look at the sky, spend time enjoying the majestic sunrise and sunset, you would stop and smell the roses. Don’t wait to be on the verge of death to start enjoying life, do it right now. There is no time better than the present. Have fun with your God, have fun with your spouse, have fun with your children, have fun with your work and remember how blessed you are to have them all.
6. LAUGH
Laughter is proven to increase your immune system response. It increases many glandular, hormonal and organ functions. It decreases stress, depression and anxiety. Norman Cousins wrote a book, Anatomy of an Illness, and in it he explained how he healed himself of a chronic degenerative disorder by watching comedies and laughing hours each day. Laughter is healthy and it’s fun, so do it every day.
7. VISUAL IMAGERY/DREAM
This is a powerful tool in any mind/body treatment. The bible says, “as a man thinks in his heart so is he.” This is visual imagery. It is seeing you and your body as totally healthy or whole all the way from your white blood cell (WBC) activity to your physical performance. Studies have shown if you see your WBC as Pac Man type cells, going around eating all the cancerous cells, this actually boosts your immunity and overall health. Another study took two groups of high school basketball players. One group spent an allotted amount of time each day practicing their free throw shot whereas the second group took the same amount of time to visualize their shots going into the basket without additional practice. The results showed a greater improvement in the visualizing group over the practicing group. See yourself in your mind managing your time, organized, having a lot of time extra time for your spiritual communication with God through meditation/prayer, for your spouse, your family and simply having fun. Visualize yourself doing the best at your work in the least amount of time. As you keep seeing yourself a certain way, this is the way you become.
8. JUST LET GO
Imagine a women holding on to a piece of baggage. God reached out His hand to grab hers, but before she could fully hold on to Him, she had to let go of the baggage she was carrying. The baggage represented all the things in life that we hold on to; some good, some not so good. Things like comfort, security, past hurts, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness. They were all in the baggage. In life, we have to just let go of the things that bind us or hold us back. Sometimes this includes leaving our comfort zone to be stretched to greater heights. We must let go of all the things that hurt us in the past; all the anger, frustration, bitterness, all of it. It does nothing but become a weight that we carry that prevents us from flying high above the clouds of life on “wings of eagles.” In life, is it better to always be right, or to be at peace?How much effort and energy are you going to expend to prove you are right? Sometimes it’s better to just let go and fly. You must pray to know when to hold on and when to let go, but Ithink a lot more people would live healthier, happier lives if they would learn to let go more and enjoy the moment. If you knew you only had one month to live, what things in your life would really matter?Money?A job?Always being right?All the annoyance and frustrations that present themselves to drain your joy and peace?Ithink not. If you knew you had one month to live, you would let go of everything except the highest priorities in your life:
1) God, and 2) Family.
You would start to see the preciousness and beauty of every day that God made and would take time to smell the roses, to see the sun rise and set. You would enjoy the blue sky and white clouds. You would begin to truly live. So Iask you:why do we wait until we know we are going to die before we start to really live?Let’s live every day like it is our last. Let’s spend some time in quiet meditation with God, being renewed and refreshed each and every day with revelations from Him. Let’s enjoy our family, not trying always to be right, but always trying to live in love, joy, and peace. When we learn to let go, we can receive all that we truly desire.
9. PROPER DIET, EXERCISE AND DETOXIFICATION
This will be covered in detail in the chapters to come, but it is important to know you are what you eat and think. If I eat cooked, dead, devitalized low nutrient content or high sugar and fat content food, I will cause anything from brain fog or cloudiness, to hyperactivity, to attention problems to various other mental/emotional symptoms like depression, anxiety, mood swings, tenseness and nervousness. Also, improper diet and exercise along with toxic build up from chemical residue in food can cause the brain to get less oxygen and nutrients which definitely will negatively impact our mental/emotional health by decreasing the amount of energy available for thinking, healing and metabolizing.