5 Ways To Reduce Stress And Find Joy And Be More Optimistic.

Stop paying attention to bad news. Get off the Internet. Read a book. Find the simple joys in life. Take in the cool crisp air of the morning. Don’t let the media influence your morning. Tune out. Find the beauty in life. Chop all the bad news out and you’ll find slices of joy you never knew existed!

Meditate. Find peace in the present moment. Learn to still your chattering mind.  There are so many ways to meditate these days. There is the traditional method of sitting still and paying attention to your outer breath.  Or download an app for your smart phone. I recently downloaded “ Meditation 4 Inner Wisdom” and loved its relaxing flow.

Don’t worry about stuff you can’t change. Work is incredibly demanding these days. Greece is falling apart. Winter is coming. I can either let these stressors roll around in my head like a mouse on a flywheel or pay attention to what I CAN change. What can you change in your life? Write it down and start making those changes. Let the rest of it go. Are you worrying about stuff you cannot change?  Let it go today and change what you have control over.

Exercise. I’ve been trying to lose 20 pounds with no results. I eat well but haven’t been eating fewer calories. Simple math. If I wish to continue to eat the same amount of calories I HAVE to exercise more. Today I got back on the elliptical running machine and did some weights. AND!!  And what? And exercise is one of the very best ways to reduce stress. It’s a double win! Let’s start an exercise routine today! One of the very best decisions you will have made, at any stage in your life.

Write your goals down. We constantly dream and plan in our heads. We stand around the water cooler and talk about living in a warmer climate, having more money or working in a dream career. Get those thoughts out of your head and onto paper! Make them concrete. Take the next step towards making them into reality. What is your biggest dream? What is the very next action you need to take to make your dream a reality? What is stopping you? Write it down today and write down the next step you need to take. Now you are on your way!!

Happiness Is The Ultimate Goal

When making life changes isn’t happiness your ultimate goal? Isn’t a life filled with joy, contentment, love and those soft wonderful moments what you strive for?

Success isn’t happiness. Find happiness and success will follow right behind. Find positivity and success will be right behind. But always, always find gratitude.

All the experts are with me on this one. Gratitude is a seriously beautiful building block to everlasting happiness.

I am grateful for having a warm and furry pet to hug.

I am grateful for plenty of foods and an abundance of water.

I am grateful to live in an open and uncensored society.

Think about 3 things you are grateful about every day. Let go of the constant flow of bad news. Squash the media. Block advertising out of your life.

Find the beauty. Find your connection to nature. Love your life.

How I Let Go Of Stress Overnight

If we want to fully let go of the endless negative chatter in your head, try following the techniques prescribed in the book – The Myth Of Stress.

The technique used in this book is called Active insight.  Active insight is about changing your beliefs that drive emotions and behaviour. Changing these beliefs brings a peace and clarity to your mind enabling you to move onto bigger and better things.

Is 100% of our stress internal?  Do we create 100% of our stress?  Yes.

This isn’t a technique that allows you to temporarily escape stress, it addresses it at the root cause.

Here is an example of an exercise I have performed.

A stressful thought that continuously pops up for me is “I should weigh less”

To rid myself of this silly stressful belief and to accept myself I  insert the following

“In reality I should not weigh less at this time because …

“In reality I should not weigh less at this time because I am not exercising daily”.

“In reality I should not weigh less at this time because I eat more than my body needs”

“In reality I should not weigh less at this time because I’m over 30 years old and as we get older we put on weight”

“In reality I should not weigh less at this time because I drink alcohol which is empty calories”

Now I don’t go around with the vague stress belief that I should weigh less.  I’ve accepted the reality as to why I don’t weigh less. I’ve accepted my life and how I got here.

Now I’m ready to move on and change instead of letting this little thought stress me almost every day.

I have insight into my biggest cause of stress. That insight was my vague belief.

How I Started A New Life With One Hour

There are 24 hours in a day. Once those 24 hours are up, that day will be gone forever. Then a new one starts all over. Then it is gone forever too. How are you spending each day?

The burning question is how do you spend your 24 hours? During the week, we may have 7 hours to sleep,8 hours for work, 1 -2  hours for various and traffic, 2 hours for meals. This leaves us with about 6 hours. Let’s say we exercise for 1 hour and if we have a family, 3 hours with them.

We still have about 2 hours left over.

1-2 hours to start your dream.

1-2 hours to begin your blog.

1-2 hours to meditate and relieve your stress.

1-2 hours to read self development and expand your mind.

I spend 1 hour a day on this website, writing, editing, modifying, creating and finding incredible meaning and purpose.

What is stopping you from planting the seeds of the dream life you always imagined? Why aren’t you spending an hour a day on what YOU love? Why are you giving 8 hours to a corporation and leave nothing for yourself?

It’s time to stop screwing around, wasting your time and make the life changes you want right now.

There is absolutely no excuse.

Choose To Be Happy

I’ve shut off most news sources in my life. The television and Internet news were just blood sucking happiness leeches, filling my mind with unnecessary doom and gloom.

Everyone wants to be happy. Sure it’s sounds incredibly corny, but if you think you have a better theory please let me know. Happiness isn’t overrated, it is the primary goal of our lives. There is no better feeling than waking up in the morning and looking forward to the day.

Of course life isn’t always going to be full of rainbows and lollipops. Problems arise when you start to believe your constant negative thoughts and feelings are facts, but in reality they are not you. They are not facts. They are only struggles in your mind. You CAN let them go. So just let them go.

I avoid people that complain and insist that the world is against them. They have become totally blind to any type of appreciation and would rather wallow in self pity.  Perhaps they will die like this one day, wallowing in self pity. And don’t get me started about excuses.

I choose to listen to inspiring audio books when I drive into work.  I choose to think about how lucky I am to have shelter, food, safety and love in my life. I am hopeful for the future and realize my potential is almost unlimited.  I meditate to cease the struggle of my mind, coming back to the present moment over and over again. I notice the deep blue sky during a sunset.  I stand outside in the quiet of the morning, gazing at the cool shades of the morning sky and listen to the birds.

I choose to be aware of what’s around me.  I choose to be happy.

If you enjoyed this post today, please do me a big favor and use the “Twitter” button down below (click on the + sign) to share it with your Twitter friends and followers (You can also share it on Facebook, Digg, or any of the other sites you see below as well).

Finding Peace And Harmony With Meditation

Plenty of people ask me how to meditate.

I think a better question would be why I meditate.

Meditation is about letting go of the normal world and associated thoughts that constantly invade the senses and mind. Meditation is about just being instead of doing. Meditation is about becoming friends with yourself and realizing that separation from the ego brings freedom and happiness.

We bombard ourselves with thoughts beginning with I. I need to pay the bills. I need to lose weight. I need to buy a new something. I should be eating better.  Probably 80% of these thoughts are constantly and annoyingly repeating themselves from one day to the next.  It seems to be a constant struggle. Meditation trains you to quiet the mind and look at life from new perspective. By calming the mind, you begin to distance yourself from all that mindless chatter and begin to think with more clarity. Meditation reduces snap decisions and trains you to look at yourself and your thoughts with a friendly curiosity. Instead of being overwhelmed with sudden angry thoughts, you become more inquisitive about your thoughts. Most importantly meditation slows down and relaxes the mind. Don’t we all want that? Don’t we want to exercise the body and the mind?

By practicing meditation, you will find that it affects your whole day. Decisions are made with more clarity. Peacefulness resides in the background of you at all times. You realize that struggling with thoughts all the time was a waste of time.  Life will throw you curve balls all the time. It isn’t easy sometimes. But the more you are able to quiet your thoughts and stop labeling and twisting them, the easier it becomes.

So step out of all those thoughts of desire, dislike, fear, and ego. Don’t let them control you. You can learn to control them.  Soon you will see yourself changing and become friends with yourself and your thoughts. You will chase your thought less often, become less judgmental and see the world with more clarity.

And finally, if you use the meditation technique of following your breath throughout the day, you will be living in the present moment more often. This is the ultimate goal of course, because the more you live in the moment, the more you give your life your fullest attention. Don’t you want to be aware of life and all it has to offer? I certainly hope so.

A Simple Strategy To Start Meditating Right Now

Here is a simple strategy to begin meditating tomorrow morning. Meditation isn’t some mystical journey whereas you are required to become a Zen or Buddhist master. Meditation is simply staying in one place quietly, eventually learning to be in the present moment until it becomes natural.

Living in the present moment is the beginning to ending the mindless clatter and worries that are constantly bombarding you. Meditation teaches you to ignore self destructive thoughts and become at peace with ones selves, warts and all.

My meditation techniques are based on the practices of Pema Chodron .

Find a quiet room away from your bedroom. Sit upright, hands on lap, legs crossed and focus on a spot 4 to 5 feet in front of you.  Concentrate on your outer breath as a way of focusing the mind. When a thought arises, label it as “thinking” and go back to concentrating on your outer breath.  Let your thoughts go over and over again by labeling them as thinking. Continue to relax and allow whatever thoughts to arise without labeling them good or bad. Return to your outer breath.

Try to perform this exercise 15 minutes a day to start. After a while you will notice that you can return to the present moment much easier. This is one of the best ways to reduce the stress caused by over thinking and worrying.

You are the master of your life.

Happiness and Awareness Are Coming To A Future Near You

We are not always aware of the world around us because our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors usually hijack our awareness. Once we overly identify with our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we usually lose our awareness of ourselves and the world around us. Being aware means stepping out of this destructive cycle and realizing our true or greater nature. Our true nature is bigger than this. Stepping out of an emotional cycle creates a vast space in our mind, where we can experience our true selves and not the self created from our emotions. For example, “I am angry” turns into “I am experiencing anger.” Once we recognize this we can usually step away from any emotion and it eventually recedes instead of strengthening. Being aware (or living in the now) is a pure form of consciousness that can be particularly joyful and free ,which then eliminates our temptation to use past conditioning , blaming, or other negative behaviors that will most likely be destructive.

So happiness doesn’t always begin with a simple switch of attitude. Happiness begins with the realization that we can step away from the turbulence of the mind and just soak in the now with every fiber of our body. Staying in the now elevates us to experience this world as we were truly meant to as human beings. Staying in the now or being aware makes something as simple as a walk in the park a truly joyful experience. We feel the grass under foot, the sunshine warming our skin and the scent of flowers as we are meant to experience. It is actually a very simple concept and free to experience every moment of our lives. So wake up and look around you. You are not your emotions, thoughts or conditioning. You are free. Free to embrace each and every moment as you choose to.