health

“We have perfected the attitude of worry. If we don’t have something to worry about, that worries us.”—Michele Longo O’Donnell

Stress is a thug and a thief.
It’s a thug because it has such little regard for our well being, and a thief because it absconds with BIG chunks of our time.
They add up.

Stress, that jerk, has looted years of accumulated hours from my life.

So I have no problem giving stress the finger, whenever I can.

I take great glee in pissing it off.

Here are the top ten things that piss-off stress.
Practice them wisely…..and often.

1) Rest.
Stress HATES when we’re well rested. We make better decisions, we’re on our game and less likely to muck things up.
Naps, long weekends and vacations are its Kryptonite.

2) A Sense of Humor/Laughing.
Have you ever tried to laugh while completely stressed out? A real, deep belly laugh? It’s almost impossible. It’s akin to keeping your eyes open when you sneeze. The two CANNOT co-exist.

3) Asking for help.
Stress can’t stand it when we realize our limitations, delegate and ask for help. It needs a frazzled, over extended, perfectionist, control freak as a host. Calling in the Calvary BEFORE you’ve reached your wit’s end, sends stress the silent Jedi signal: This is not the droid you’re looking for.

4) Believing you have enough.
If you believe you have enough time, money, resources, help and happiness, you will be invisible to stress. It will pass your house and go torment your neighbors.

5) Exercise.
Yes, it is possible to outrun stress. You can outrun it on the treadmill, or with the dogs at the park. Once that heart rate goes up and those endorphins kick in, stress will NOT be able to keep up. Stress carb loads; it always goes for seconds, eats peanut butter out of the jar with a serving spoon, and parks illegally in the handicapped space, so it never has to walk far. Stress hates a fit body and a clear head.

6) Organization.
When you’re well organized, meaning, you know where everything is, and can easily find it, stress has a shit fit.
How can it fuck with you and mess with your head, if you can immediately come up with your passport, keys, glasses, insurance papers, rent check, stamps, cat nail clipper and both of the same black sandals?

7) Behaving like a grown up.
Stress despises adult behavior. Stress is counting on us to NEVER grow up. It adores a good temper tantrum and will do everything in its power to keep us from getting our ducks in a row. As a matter of fact, it is heavily invested in the prospect of us not saving for retirement, avoiding responsibility, making uninformed decisions and never planning for the future.

8) Self care.
This pisses-off stress almost more than anything. Getting a massage, doing yoga and meditating. Those are three of its mortal enemies. It throws its hands up, shakes its head and walks away in defeat. It can’t take hold of a peaceful mind.

9) Not caring what other people think.
Once you drop that bad habit, stress will have to go find another victim. Don’t feel bad for a second. There are millions.

10) Awareness.
Stress has a fit when you call it out. It can’t stand that you know its name and what it looks like.
It would rather stay anonymous, in one of its many disguises. As a headache, an ulcer, colitis, hives, over eating, over spending, depression and anxiety.
I told you, it’s a thug.
It knows, that once you know why it’s there, it’s days are numbered.

Can you think of more ways to piss off stress? Tell me what you do, I’d LOVE to hear some comments!

Xox

Which came first?
The thought or the illness?
It’s kind of that chicken and the egg question,
and it really can leave us in a quandary.

Can there still be any argument made as to whether there is a correlation between mind and body? 

“Whatever shall we do?”
We were just about to start that book, 
write that song,
Get to the gym every day,
start that photography assignment, 
commit to that healthy diet,
give that speech,
you get the picture,
and suddenly…the flu!

Or that painful frozen shoulder,
Or the terrible migraines,
Or you blow out your knee on a run,
Or your stomach hurts and no one can figure out why,
Or your back goes into spasms, leaving you walking around like Quasimodo.
Any number of illnesses or injuries occur that keep us from realizing the full potential of our lives.

Because, what I really believe, is that there are thoughts in our heads,
negative, belittling thoughts, that take our brains hostage.
Like the wolf in sheep’s clothing, they are in the disguise of stress, or worry, and we may not even be consciously aware of them, but they are up to no good as they do their dirty work.

Those negative thoughts hour after hour, day after day, chip away at our sense of worth and self esteem, spiraling our energy downward and leaving our immune systems wide open to illness and our bodies to injury.

My friend asked me the other day, “so I brought this injury upon myself”?
and I really believe that we do, without even knowing it.
But we must stop and pay attention to HOW WE FEEL.

When there is something that is eating away at our gut, 
or looming, or hanging over our heads, you know,
like a relationship, either personal or professional that has run
it’s course, or a deadline for an assignment, or a talk we have to give,
that energy is conducive to any form of injury or illness paying us a visit.

And what does that do? It keeps us from achieving our goals.
It gives us more time to stew in our own toxic juices.
So the worse we feel, the longer it will take to get to that thing we’re avoiding, and then we feel like a failure and it just feeds on itself.

I had the most frozen of shoulders when my store started to go downhill.
I could barely move my arm without screaming.
I couldn’t hang any art, or move anything heavy…which was everything.
I could see the writing on the wall, but I just couldn’t face it inside.
I felt like Atlas, with the weight of the world on my shoulders,
Ahhhhhh Haaaaa! pretty transparent now looking back!

I’ve also suffered debilitating anxiety attacks when I had huge decisions to make
in my life that would change its trajectory.
Like leaving my first marriage.
I was 25 and completely paralyzed with fear.
I didn’t trust the stirrings of my soul, so I froze up with anxiety.
Once I did make the decision and moved out, the anxiety moved on too!

My second bout of horrible anxiety came about twenty years ago,
when my soul stirred again, and it was urging me to do this work,
including the writing I’m doing now. But I didn’t have the courage to go public.
It all seemed too big, and I wasn’t ready.
So I suffered.
I was ignoring the call, that feeling in my gut.
I’d rather live a small, safe life of MY choosing,
than something bigger that the Universe has in store for me.

And that’s how it starts, we ignore what would make us happy,
and we stay small and settle for less.
And it makes us sick.
Doesn’t that make sense?

Try it on, if it doesn’t apply to you, 
Cheers! Carry on!
But if you think it might, change those thoughts, do what has to be done,
the energy will change, and you’ll be amazed at how fast your knee, shoulder, stomach, improves!

XoxJanet