There are many things in life that can cause stress, and the more stressors we face at once, the more reactive we become to all of them. When you strip away the stressful things in life that can be dropped, you'll have more energy and patience to deal with the stressors that are left. This blog brings you the resources to simplify, and become more resilient as a result. You can find more stress management resources on Facebook (be sure to "like"), and enjoy your week!
Please feel free to add your own tips for simplifying life in the comments section, sign up for the free stress management newsletter for ongoing updates, and have a wonderful week!
- Simple Living Tips For Stress Relief
Simplifying stress in your lifestyle can be a surprisingly simple and effective way to relieve stress. Here are some guidelines that can help you to focus your attention on areas where the most beneficial changes can be made, and get started in making those changes. - More Specific Tips To Simplify Life
Dropping negative relationships, culling clutter, and other changes can cut out a surprising amount of stress if these are issues that affect your life right now. Here are some more specific areas to focus on changing, and easy ways to do so. - Streamlined Stress Relief
Managing stress can be simple as well! Here are a few ways that you can focus on stress relief in your life, and simple tips on finding stress management that works for you. - Life Plan Strategies For Those Who Are Too Busy
Here's a plan you can follow to cut out hidden stressors in virtually every area of your lifestyle.
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(Part 3)
Do you prefer personal instruction? Then learn Transcendental Meditation (TM). The course fee is high, but the instruction is standardized, certified, and effective. TM is validated by 600 published research studies, looking at it in many different ways.
Do you prefer doing things on your own? Then learn Natural Stress Relief (NSR). The course fee is low, and you can learn at your own pace, by mail. Even NSR, a newcomer, is validated by two published studies.
Okay. Where will you go from here?
The TM and NSR websites give all the information you need about transcending, the technique, and about taking the course. It boils down to whether you want to read tantalizing articles about stress, with loads of tips that have little or no actual effect, or whether you are ready to restore a missing state of consciousness, one with the remarkable yet completely natural ability to eliminate stored stresses.
My advice: take the big step of learning what you actually need to master the art of living.
David Spector
President,
Natural Stress Relief/USA
(Part 2)
What’s missing is facing the fact that we’re missing something in our lives. Our regular experience of waking, dreaming, and sleeping are evidently not enough. Three states of consciousness are not sufficient to face any stressor with calm composure.
We need normalcy, by which I mean freedom from stored, internal stresses. We can only get there if we add back the missing fourth state of consciousness, the one that has the ability to eliminate internal stresses.
Then it won’t matter if we have too much to do, or we have hard deadlines, or our environment frustrates us, or our neighbor insults us. Free from internal stress, anyone can have the natural strength to welcome it all, and to enjoy the challenges.
It doesn’t take a special attitude. It requires a special state of consciousness. In fact, only a special state of consciousness CAN eliminate our internal stresses and bring natural strength, joy, and flexibility.
Transcending, the fourth state of consciousness, is easily practiced while sitting in a comfortable chair for a few minutes, twice a day. It feels like a deep state of restful awareness. It FEELS natural. It’s not hypnosis, suggestion, a scam, a religion, or a waste of time. Just a few minutes of the fourth state of consciousness is enough to begin dissolving some of the tens of thousands of stored stresses that we’ve accumulated over a lifetime.
If you’re about to ask me how to do it, don’t. It’s a subtle technique that requires instruction. I’m not going to botch it by trying to teach you a missing state of consciousness in a comment in a blog.
But the good news is that it’s very easy to learn.
(Part 1)
Here’s a collection of articles on the usual stress relief tips. The reason for so many tips is that they don’t work, at least not in the long run.
And the reason they don’t work in the long run is that tips don’t actually systematically eliminate our internalized stresses.
Let’s cut to the chase: you can’t get to a peaceful, joyful, and flexible life by adopting an attitude, by watching your breathing, or by trying something new. You can only get there by eliminating the stresses. Tips don’t do that.
Don’t waste time dealing with the symptoms. Get to the root of the problem and water the root. Watering the root will make the whole plant grow. Watering the leaves will do nothing. Nothing!
Even if “stress tips” do shake us up a bit, or bring some relaxation, they don’t begin to touch our actual stored, internal stresses. Tips are not a solution to the problem of stress. Not one published “stress tip” even works for long. They’re all based on the placebo effect: change something in a person’s life and tell them their life will improve, and it will. For awhile. And then the stresses close in again, and life becomes filled with all the nasties: irritation, frustration, and just plain suffering.
What’s missing is not a better intellectual analysis. Thousands of analyses have already been published, with no resulting improvement to society, or even any improvement in understanding stress. It’s already obvious that external stresses overload our nervous system, resulting in dysfunctions (internal stresses) that further impair our ability to tolerate external stresses. Tell the researchers and the bloggers to leave it alone: it’s already obvious.
Thank you for your thoughts; you make several valid points. For example, minimizing our internal stressors can be quite beneficial, as can learning different forms of meditation. (This is why you will find so many articles here on both.) However, saying that tips–information–cannot help with stress is simply wrong. Virtually every piece of information you find here is validated by research and has already been proven beneficial. I sometimes break the information into “tips” because sometimes that is all people have time for–concrete changes they can put into action immediately to reduce their allostatic load and minimize the stress that they are experiencing. Sometimes this is all they are looking for, while other times, this reduction in stress can help empower them to take further steps toward inner peace. It helps to have many different approaches because different techniques resonate with different personality types or life situations. They do work, and I have many emails from readers to attest to that.
Programs can work as well, and are often effective, but they are not fail-safe either. The drop-out rate for TM programs is rather high, and the rate at which people are regularly practicing after 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year is certainly not ideal. That does not mean that the program doesn’t work, but we need a variety of stress management approaches to help those who find it too difficult to stick long-term with programs like the ones you are recommending.
I do understand your desire to publicize your program, but please don’t try to discourage people from using other effective stress management resources as well by making blanket attacks. These tips–and the more involved stress management techniques you will also find here–are quite effective and have helped many, many people–all free of charge.
I am actually more sympathetic to the stress-tips approach than my energetic attack might suggest.
In the last analysis, the proof for anyone (including leaders in the field of stress reduction such as yourself) can only be found by actually trying transcending (either TM or NSR) for themselves.
It’s very much like the taste of a strawberry. We know what it is because we have experienced it. But any description in words is pale; it cannot convey the distinctiveness of the actual flavor.
There’s really a good reason so many doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists recommend TM or NSR for their patients, and why so many priests, ministers, and rabbis recommend TM and NSR, and why practitioners are typically so enthusiastic.
But it’s really, really hard to convince people of something so incredibly revolutionary, as your reasonable and understandable response shows.
Thank you so much for letting me have my say!
Thank you, and, just to clarify, I am not disparaging TM. It’s definitely an effective approach to stress management, and I have taken a similar training myself, so I can say that personally and professionally. I just don’t want people to think of it as the ONLY effective approach, because some people really respond better to other techniques.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts. As I said, you have brought up some great points!
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