Who hasn’t felt stressed? I don’t see any hands. It happens. What if there were a simple technique we could use to quickly lower our stress level? I’d like that. Yesterday, a potential answer showed up on my YouTube selections. In the video, Professor Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist, provides a quick way to lower our stress level. Anyone can do it. Here’s the video.
I watched a great video where the speaker (a professor at Berkeley) spoke of the science of weight training and how to lift for endurance or strength. He said that one should lift between 30% and 80% of their maximum load. The closer to 80% the more the strength gains. The range between 30% and 50% took care of maintaining muscle and building endurance. What if we applied the same principle to our everyday lives. We don’t have to go 100% to achieve maximum results. We can scale back and achieve optimum results and simultaneously reduce our stress levels. Are you running at 100%? Try scaling back by easing your foot off the acceleration pedal. You’ll feel better.
Joseph Campbell speaks about writing in Reflections on the Art of Living. He says, “get the writing out first. Forget the critic and just write. Afterward, you can bring in the critical factor and prune. . . . Do not think about the negative side. There will be negatives that are going to come down, but you have to hold the door open if you are going to do anything that has not been done before. You have to suspend all criticism to do your work. In writing you have to do this all the time in order to get a sentence out. Suspending criticism is killing the dragon. They’ll shalt kill him. P. 269
Note: It’s true in writing. It’s true in all aspects of our lives. The biggest problem I had in working with students writing their dissertation was to help them move beyond thinking what they were going to write had to be perfect. Once they slayed that dragon, their writing flowed. If we think of the criticisms we’ll receive whether it’s making dinner, posting a blog, or choosing a personal adventure, we’ll never get it done the way we could do it if we didn’t think about what others would think. Slay the dragons in your life. You’ll feel a lot better.
Do you ever feel as if your on one of those moving walkways at the airport and there’s no way to get off? It’s one thing after another. And, just when you think you’ve cleared everything, boom, an avalanche strikes (I know I’m mixing metaphors, LOL). I’ve read articles that encourage people to take a day or two off a week. I’ve found when I’m jammed packed with things to do and take a day off I spend the day thinking about how much I’ll have to do when I start up in the morning – it’s not as relaxing as promised. A different way may by to rethink the day. Sure it’s busy. One way to bring the hectic pace down is is to rethink how we eat our meals. Set aside the digital media and enjoy the meal. Resist grabbing a coffee and a quick meal and eating it on the train, bus or in the car. Make dinner time special where everyone has a chance talk about their day. Everyone should get a chance at debriefing. If you must work at night, set a time when work stops Make it an hour before you go to bed and chill (watch something relaxing).. If we put our creative caps on, we can think of multiple ways to step off the treadmill and avoid the avalanche .
Joseph Campbell says in Reflections on the Art of Living, “I know when my life is not in the center. I get desirously involved with my relation to some achievement or system that is tangential to the real centering of my life. And I know when I am on track that is, when everything is in harmonious relationship to what I regard as the best I’ve got, and me. P. 72
Note: We know when our lives are spinning out of control. We’re stressed. We snap at folks we love. We’re not taking care of our physical and spiritual side. That’s why it’s important to set aside quiet time. A time to lower the body and mind’s speed limit. Once we bring our emotional speed limit down, we can center ourselves and regain a sense of peace.
We’re in for a stretch of scorching heat in south Texas. Temperature may climb up to 106 F in the city and much hotter in the desert lands to the west. I like the heat. I don’t have much of a choice. There are some things in life you have to roll with if you want to be happy. Why let the little things knock you off balance? Roll with what you can’t change. Focus on the gifts you have and be grateful and you’ll discover today and each day following will be a great day.
“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.
Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, described the things that helped the prisoners cope with their horrendous conditions, “To discover that there was any symptoms of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider. But he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint traces of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor more than anything else in the human makeup can afford, and aloofness and inability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds p. 54.”
NOTE: The use of humor can take a tough situation and reduce the tension associated with it, if only for a moment. We frequently create our own humor by adding an exaggeration to a situation. For example, an insensitive boss tosses a stack of papers on a worker’s desk and demands, “I want this report in an hour.” The worker in the break room relays the incident to his colleagues and adds, “We he gets home I wonder if he tells his pregnant wife, “I want the baby born now while I have a minute.” They all laugh and agree that is probably what happens.
Sometimes, if we’re not careful, our lifestyle can impose an unhealthy level of stress. We can make adjustments to our lifestyle and lower our stress level. It’s not easy when we are bombarded with ads encouraging us to live beyond our means. Learning to say no to the temptations to live beyond our means is a good step to lowering one’s stress level. A minimalist lifestyle is one way of easing the stress from pressures associated with consumerism.
