Creating Stress

As I was riding my bike earlier today, there was a squirrel freaking out next to me.
He (or she) was frantically darting back and forth, trying to decide how to get away from me as fast as possible.

It made me think about how different his stress is compared to mine.

He was in survival mode. He thought I wanted to kill him.
(I promise I didn’t.)

I am almost never in survival mode.

If I am in survival mode, it is usually because I have created the need for it in my brain.

I have made a scenario that most likely wouldn’t even be an issue in a world where I had to fight for my life against dinosaurs or giants, into an issue.

And it made me think about something my husband once said to me after I got stressed out about something trivial in our van.
Nate the Great said: “Since our lives are so great, we (smart man) find other things to be stressed about.”

He was so spot on.

Because we do not have to fight for survival, we create stressors.
We make scenarios more stressful than they need to be, or we inflate them more than we ever would if survival were still a normal part of our lives.

We create the same fight or flight reaction in our bodies with our minds.

We let the small things affect us.

We react. As if… it was life or death.
Most of us are frequently in this stressed-out, reactionary state.

Instead of fending for our lives, we are stressed about what someone said about us or how they said it.
Or how our favorite restaurant didn’t have our favorite meal.
Or how there is “never enough time.”

We let the little things get to us. We create stress in our lives with our thoughts.

I want to invite you to take a deep breath and stop.
Look around you.
Notice how amazing your life is.
Notice all that you have.
Notice how wonderful it is that you woke up this morning!
(Notice that you don’t have to fight off giants or dinosaurs on the way to Starbucks.)

And decide to pick your battles.

There are times we want to be mad or upset about something. And that’s OK.

But notice how often you are upset. If it is frequent, decide to let that next thing go.

And when the next thing comes up, decide if it’s worth getting upset about.

Decide to start freeing yourself from creating stressors in your life.

If you are ready to release stressors, start feeling better in your body, and notice the little things, I would love to be part of your journey.