Years ago I received one of those emails that people circulated (you know, before FaceBook and all the other social media cut down on that sort of thing) about stress.
I have written other items about stress in previous blogs, but this is a little different.
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Stress Management
A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?”
Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.
The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”
He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on. ”
“As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.”
“So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”
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I was quite struck by the story. How often have I brought my burdens home, never giving myself a rest from them, so that they just continued to build?
And that also caused that burden to be spread to others around me because you share the energy of those you are with. Those burdens rippled out to everyone else so they ALSO had my burdens in addition to their own.
How do you release those burdens?
Here are a few things that I do.
Let go of what isn’t working for you and choose something different
You may not believe it, but you really can let go of the things that are not working for you and choose something different!
“But what if I choose something that doesn’t work?” you may ask. Well then, just choose something else AGAIN!
You don’t have to keep trying to make that one choice work!
People get so caught up in trying to make things work; trying to prove that they were right for making that choice, that they didn’t make a mistake when they chose it. People don’t want to look bad for making a choice that didn’t work.
So they hang onto it even tighter and try to make it work so they can say, “see, I was right!”
And it’s still not working, so they just keep holding on tighter and tighter instead of just saying … “I guess that wasn’t my best choice” and letting go so they can be free to choose something else.
You can let it go and choose something else!
Letting go unlocks the energy of that thing from your body and sets you free.
Letting go of attachment to things
People get so attached to what is going on in their lives. And they create all these judgements and conclusions and expectations of others and of themselves and of situations and all sorts of things which creates even more burden for them.
What if you could allow yourself to say “I release my attachment and relationship to ____”
Fill in the blank with a person’s name or a situation or a group or an item or whatever you see as a burden in your life, and, if you know the Access Clearing Statement (see the explanation of it here), you can add that at the end to assist the energy in dissipating.
This allows you to let go of all of that garbage that you have allowed to build up around that relationship and that attachment. It gives you a fresh start with whatever or whoever it is so the situation can change.
It is so freeing!
Burden Box
Another idea I was given once was a “Burden Box”. The idea is that you place a container at the front door and when you get home, you symbolically place all of your burdens in the box. Then in the morning you can choose whether you pick them up again or just let them fade away.
Now what?
So give those practices a try.
Just because you got to this point in your life by doing things a certain way doesn’t mean you can’t do something different now.
Remember … “Don’t let your luggage define your travels.”
Maybe it’s time to release all those things you have weighed upon yourself. Carrying them doesn’t usually solve them anyway, now does it?
As you release all that baggage that you believe defines you, you will see that there is a lot more out there than you thought, you just have to be a little less weighed-down to see it.
But you have to actually be willing to let go.
As Morpheus says in the Matrix “I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it.”
You have to act, you have to choose to let go.
Set yourself free!!
And for more steps to take to reduce the stress in your life, click here to check out my eBook “Destressing Your Life … Tips for Reducing Stress” eBook
