The #1 Stress Reliever In The World
If you took the next 90-days of your life and dedicated it to one task only, the task of eliminating all stress from your life, list the top five things and circumstances you would remove from your life. Go ahead. Try it. I know you feel guilty about putting your kids on that list but this is just an exercise. Do you have your list? Do you have your five things and circumstances listed and readied for hypothetical removal? Do it. I’ll wait.
List complete. Good work.
Now, I have an additional question for you. Of all of the five things listed, were “you” listed as one of your top five?
For many, that additional question is a shock and quite jarring in fact. Many would say, “Why in the world would I put myself on the list when I’m the one seeking relief?” But others get it right away. They know why they should be front and center on the list.
As human beings, we experience less of the actual world than we think we do. IN ALL HONESTY, we mostly experience our thoughts ‘about’ the world. Correction––we experience our “stressful thoughts” about the world.
There are not a lot of people who can be radically honest with themselves. Most live lives trying to avoid the truths of self or the truths of life because most are wired to run from pain and lust for pleasure. It’s a sad human trap because many of life’s rewards are on the other side of what some consider pain. And we all know that when we’ve been living a lie for a long while, truth stings, like blinding sun rays hitting eyes that have been encrusted in sleep for decades. Most would rather remain sleep and fight you to remain asleep. But the enclosed truth, embedded in this essay can fundamentally change your experience of life, that is, if you can face the truth of it.
Here is that truth:
It is our own names that should be duplicated and listed in the top five slots of our “most distressing stressors” in life. Top ten, actually. I can almost guarantee that everything listed on your list are things and circumstances that happen to humans in life, in many lives, over many periods of history. Most ‘personal human problems’ are not actually new or actually personal. Most have happened to others and are happening to others in various ways––and cannot be truthfully deemed as a personal attack upon us, but we take it that way. We take it personally. Then we start to commiserate––commiserate ‘upon’ ourselves––hammering ourselves with all kinds of bludgeoning thoughts about life and life-circumstances. Often your fear and commiserating ABOUT a thing IS MORE PAINFUL THAN ENDURING THE THING ITSELF––because you, you, you, you, you terrorize yourself about it inside. We said, “Often your fear and commiserating ABOUT a thing IS MORE PAINFUL THAN ENDURING THE THING ITSELF.”
How many times as a child did your parent inform you that you were going to the doctor’s office that day to get a shot, and immediately your mind and nerves went into complete terror at the thought? Many, right? Walking from your bedroom to the car was terrorizing––and painful. Riding from your home to the doctor’s office was amazingly terrorizing––and painful. Sitting, waiting in the waiting room for your name to be called at the doctor’s office was excruciatingly terrorizing––and painful.
And you devoured and chewed yourself from the inside out.
Then, finally, sitting in that cold examination room waiting for that smiling monster in a white coat to come, was enough inner pain to make you blackout. In your mind, you could see the long, hard needle with the piercing point at the end, hungry to painfully stab you and force its serum into you with maximum violation. And finally, the monster arrived. The white coat had come.
Dr. Monster smiled and asked you how you were, then told you to relax, then told you it wasn’t going to hurt a bit (liar), then told you they needed you to be a “big girl” or a “big boy” and to get ready to hold very still. They asked you for your compliance to this as you cried your eyes out in writhing horror. Then just as you marshaled all of the maturity you could muster––to brace yourself and let them have their way with you––the doctor handed you a lollipop, leaving you befuddled. You sat there wondering, “What? Wait! (Gasping for air) Do I not have to get the shot anymore?” Reading your eyes, the doctor said, “All done. See that didn’t hurt at all did it?” The moment had already passed. Your arm was already pierced. Serum already coursed through your veins. You looked over at your arm and saw the tiny dot thinking, “WTF?”––in your child version of the expression, of course. It happened. It’s over. And all of the exhausting, ridiculously painful stress, hurt and depletion was caused by none other than yourself. No outer scars, just the inner scars left from you trying to scratch your way out of your own body in blood-curdling fear. The white coat was not the monster, you were. And you devoured and chewed yourself from the inside out.
Your life hasn’t changed. You are still that child. Devouring yourself daily. You face your life events in the exact same way––in your adult version of the commiserating, of course.
But what would happen if you just gracefully took life as it came, instead of all of your drama-queening an drama-kinging about it? You just might have a life of peace. Because the peace-breaker had been removed. Yep. All because you removed the #1 stressor on the planet from your life circumstances; Team Drama #1: YOU AND YOUR MIND.
Life doesn’t require your PAINFUL commentary about it. It’s really unnecessary. Life moves along just fine without your views about it. And guess what, so can you.
Let life happen without all of your ‘opinionating’, loathing, and short-sighted commentary about it. See how it feels for 90 seconds, 90 minutes, 90 days. Let me tell you as a personal experiencer of this, it is an ‘amazing’ feeling. Shutting-up, inwardly, is the biggest stress reliever in the world. When you finally feel the emotional freedom this affords, you will want to prosecute yourself for all of the abuse you heaped upon yourself for no reason at all.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
