Reduce Stress and find the Inner Peace, Contentment and Joy You Always Wanted

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My Forest PathMy last post was about health as a core personal value and how you should focus on exercise.  Let’s talk about the impact of stress on the mind.

In our day to day modern life we suffer from excess choices, workload, excess email, excess meetings, excess multitasking, excess apps and excess stress in our lives.

We live in a world demanding more and more efficiency, productivity, competition, consumption, and speed.

 

With all of this stress constantly bombarding your brain – your brain then exerts an incredible amount of effort to keep you stressed.

Your wandering mind now focuses on regret, guilt, anxiety and even sadness. Morning, afternoon and evening. There are a few ways to reduce stress and incorporate more beauty, joy, love and contentment in our lives.

Learn to train your mind. Create new mind habits!

Change your inner dialogue and train your attention to focus on what is important in your life.

Upon waking, picture the people that you are grateful for being in your life. Stop letting your mind go on default mode and worry about your work day. Start waking up with a feeling of gratitude for the most important bonds in your life.

Enjoy your morning ritual of slowly waking up and feel gratitude of being able to take a warm shower. Appreciate the beauty of nature before getting in your car.  Inhale the crisp morning air, take in the blue sky, soft breeze, swaying trees, plants, flowers, sun, and song from the morning birds.

Send all these things your gratitude and realize how many people have much more difficult lives.

Practice Compassion

Yesterday I was judging a guy who was taking his time ordering sandwich meat. At one point he sent it back to have thinner slices and I could feel my inner dialogue judging him as a cantankerous old man.  Why was I letting my brain create all this stress for absolutely nothing? Compassion and acceptance can be applied to your family, friends and even the old man ordering sandwich meat. It’s a much less stressful way of life.

Practice Acceptance

When stressed out at work over a deadline, think whether this stressful time will matter in five years or even a year from now! Accept that it most likely won’t. Accept that life is full of impermanence and once you accept it you learn to love the present moment. Always remember that everything we hold dear goes back to the earth one day. Don’t think friends and family will last forever. Accept that every day you have limited time with them.

Practice Gratitude

Realize that you have it better than millions of other people on the earth. I love feeling grateful for being born and experiencing this blue planet spinning in a vast universe surrounded by trillions of stars. Every day is a small miracle. Make your feelings of gratitude a daily habit.

Practice Meditation

The other day I took a 15 minute meditation break and found my mind clearing of silly cobwebs of insecurities. Meditation promotes relaxation, appreciation for the moment, clears the mind, and creates a love for stillness and non-judgmental awareness. I have found the more I meditate the more I automatically stop and find the small joys in life.

Learn to train your mind to find small moments of joy, let go of prejudices, judgement, accept life’s impermanence and then feel the stress melt away.

This day and this sunset will never repeat itself and is forever transported to history (acceptance).

Savor life. Now.

 

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