You know that stress undermines your health, of course. You know how chronic stress can lead to burn-out. However, not all stress is recognized as stress.
In fact, A LOT OF stress isn’t recognized as stress.
We think stress is: heart beating like mad, blood rate sky high, purple face sweating, raving mad screaming woman (or man) freaking out. And that’s not us, most of the time.
Indeed, it’s not.
We recognize the extremes of fight/flight. When our bodies are on high alert, our minds go numb and we are (almost) beside ourselves.
However, that is not the most dangerous face of stress. This one usually takes care of itself when the (real or perceived) danger fades. The system goes back to normal. Heart and blood rate go down, face goes peachy pink – and apologies are made where in order.
But there’s another, more subtle and far more dangerous kind of stress. We don’t notice it because we’re so used to it. It’s like the frogs in boiling water (which apparently is a cock and bull story, they don’t really stay in until they’re boiled, but you get the picture).
Our fast, busy, full and demanding lives make stress levels creep up gradually and we tolerate more and more stress. It certainly is undermining our health. But it’s so subtle that we hardly notice.
It may be caused by all kinds of things going on in our lives but the main symptom is: the constant latent feeling that our life is a problem. That all is not well in our world. That we are not safe.
But not that ‘I am in lethal danger’ kind of ‘not safe’. It’s a much more subtle, sometimes hardly noticeable but constant state of mild anxiety, that is messing with our peace of mind and our health.
I KNOW, because it’s happened to me, even though I was already a zen and mindfulness practitioner at the time! It was that subtle. I knew all was not well, but I thought I was handling it well. I wasn’t.
So take a good look at yourself. Perhaps you have more colds in a year than you used to. Perhaps you are taking more aspirines to suppress more headaches. Perhaps you are more irritable. Perhaps you are just a tad more forgetful and have a little more trouble focussing on a job at hand. Perhaps you drink just a little more (coffee, alcohol) to calm yourself down.
Et cetera.
Don’t let that fester!
I’ve created this short, sweet & effective minicourse ‘Quiet the monkey mind – unleash your inner voice.‘ Inner peace made easy.
You’ll learn 5 tools no less to take better care of your inner peace.
It’s free now (until August 31); will be a paid (though still very inexpensive) course from September 1.
Peace and calm!
